


Gifts

by qodarkness



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Domestic Theonsa because that’s what we all need, F/M, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Theon Didn’t Die, there will be smut, time has passed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2020-03-02 05:19:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 54,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18804514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness
Summary: An occasional series. Theon didn’t die, he and Sansa are married and they continue to give each other gifts of varying kinds."By the time the Last War was ended and those who had gone south returned, there was no question about who the Queen in the North would marry."





	1. The First Gift

The First Gift

She did not go with them to King’s Landing, because she was not considered useful when it came to war.

(Sansa bit the inside of her cheeks until they bled so that she did not point out all the times she had told them how battles would play out and had been right. She had other priorities, anyway.)

She stayed in Winterfell looking after the wounded and the North. While many of the Maesters went south to tend to the walking wounded, she kept the best with her to look after the wounded who were not fit to join the armies.

The worst of them was Theon, and the gut wound the Night King had inflicted on him.

It was weeks, weeks that felt as long as years, before the Maester told her that all the crises had passed, that Theon would live and wake soon.

They had left her alone with the now sleeping patient, discreetly withdrawing because they understood far more than she had wanted them to.

She had wept by Theon’s side as if the world had ended and started again.

She did not let him go South when he woke and, despite his protests, he knew that he did not have the strength yet to travel, let alone fight in another war. By the time he was well enough to travel, he too, had other priorities.

By the time the Last War was ended and those who had gone south returned, there was no question about who the Queen in the North would marry.

 


	2. The Gift Of Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were only three people who Theon would let near his face with an open blade: Yara, Sansa and Theon himself. Yara was busy being Queen of the Iron Islands and after the incident known as the Great “who knew shallow scalp wounds bled THAT much?” Affair, Theon and Sansa had come to an agreement that he was no longer allowed to cut his own hair. Particularly as he had tended to steel himself to the task with several cups of wine.

The Gift Of Trust

Sansa looked up from her breakfast correspondence and considered her husband, who was studying the letter the courier had brought for him with this week’s delivery, already making notes on the parchment by the side of his plate.

“Tyrion?” she asked.

“Mm-hmmm,” responded Theon, too intent to make actual words. After Sansa had included a number of Theon’s suggestions on how to manage warfare against the Iron Fleet in her own letters, Tyrion had decided to write to her husband directly. It had long since gone past naval battle tactics to discussions on how to restore the southern kingdoms and manage the relationship with the nations over the sea. Tyrion had come to appreciate the wisdom and compassion Theon had gained over the course of his life, as well as the cautiously realistic way he approached negotiations with other kingdoms.

The Coalition of the Maimed, Tyrion had called it in a letter Theon had read to her one day, and Sansa had held her breath as she wondered how Theon would react to that. Relief had flooded through her as Theon laughed suddenly, a hearty unselfconscious bark of joy. “I deserve that,” he had said. “I used to make the most terrible dwarf jokes about Tyrion. Not as bad as Euron, though.”

It had ended with them in the solar, where the strengthening spring sun was filtered and concentrated by the arrangement of windows. Theon had been sprawled on the day lounge there, Sansa sitting between his legs and leaning back against his chest as he told her all of the outrageously terrible dwarf jokes he had made and the worse ones Tyrion told him about in their letters.

Sansa had swung between laughter and outrage until Theon couldn’t help but tighten his arms around her waist in delight. “I was a _terrible_ boy,” he said. “How on earth did you ever fall in love with me?”

“You got better,” murmured Sansa and Theon had grinned sharply and his teeth had nipped at the back of her ear where he could reach it. Sansa drew in a sharp breath and then sharper again as he followed up with a series of small nips that followed the long line of her neck down to her shoulder, where her perfect porcelain skin rose out of her gown. There was very little conversation after that.

Sansa made the smallest of satisfied humming sounds remembering that day, and that was enough to finally tear Theon’s attention from the letter. “Yes?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” responded Sansa, then cocked her head to one side, considering the picture Theon presented to her, with the morning sun filtering into the room behind him. “Except - you are looking rather scruffy.”

“Scruffy?” Theon repeated.

“Scruffy,” confirmed Sansa. Theon’s curls had definitely gone past long and were hovering on unkempt. “The Queen’s Consort should have some standards, you know.”

Solemnly, Theon poked his tongue out at his Queen. “Time for a haircut?” he asked, after Sansa had responded with a satisfying giggle.

They went back to the solar, as they always did. The light was better there and made trimming his curls much easier on Sansa. Sansa’s maid had gone to the barber and the combs, razor, water and towels were set up as they should be. The barber had been somewhat offended at first by the fact that he hadn’t been considered good enough to trim the Lord Theon’s hair but a quiet explanation had mollified him long ago.

There were only three people who Theon would let near his face with an open blade: Yara, Sansa and Theon himself. Yara was busy being Queen of the Iron Islands and after the incident known as the Great “who knew shallow scalp wounds bled THAT much?” Affair, Theon and Sansa had come to an agreement that he was no longer allowed to cut his own hair. Particularly as he had tended to steel himself to the task with several cups of wine.

It had taken a number of lessons with the barber and thankfully a decreasing amount of wine, but Sansa was now quite an expert at keeping Theon’s rather wild curls in check. She busied herself combing out the tangles in Theon’s hair and damping it to allow her to judge the length correctly. There had been a number of instances in the early days when Theon had ended up looking like one of Sansa’s straw dolls post-Arya’s attentions - all bits sticking out higgledy-piggledy - but her skills had advanced considerably since then.

Finally she lifted the razor, opening it with a practiced flick of her wrist. It was sharp already - the barber knew to strop it to a fine edge before it went to Lord Theon, after a single disastrous attempt by Sansa to sharpen it where Theon could see her do so.

“Are you ready?” she asked quietly, noting the reflexive twitch of his hands, opening and closing on the ends of the arms of the chair. She waited patiently and slowly the twitching stopped and his ragged breathing settled back to normal. His nod, when it came, was curt but he did not flinch when she picked up the first lock of his hair.

It took a while to work her way around the back and sides of his head, Sansa concentrating fiercely to make sure every part of his hair was cut evenly - it was fine and silken and it took great care to get it exactly the way she wanted it. Theon was comfortable enough to even smile in delight as she finally moved in from of him, the end of her tongue poking out slightly with her sheer concentration, a pretty frown between her brows as she got the last pieces just right. The blade in the edge of his vision still made him want to cringe but the terrible reflexive terror was gone now.

Finally Sansa was done. A last fuss of her fingers through his hair to get it to sit just so and she smiled at him in satisfaction. “Done,” she said. “You look positively presentable, my Lord. Well,” she tilted her head again. “Except for the beard. I don’t think you need to go into full Tormund bear mode now that spring is back.”

She dropped a light kiss above Theon’s right brow and, folding the razor shut, put it down carefully. The small table held another razor, and Sansa took a moment to call for her maid, who had been waiting and delivered a bowl of hot water and a fresh towel and quickly left the room. Sansa organised everything on the table to her satisfaction and then looked back up at Theon. “Shall I see you soon?” she asked, getting ready to leave.

“Sansa,” said Theon, and suddenly stopped, like he had run out of words, or the ability to say words, or to think at all. “Sansa,” he repeated, his voice thick.

“I’m here,” said Sansa, not understanding what had caused Theon’s sudden inability to speak, but she had endless patience when it came to him.

“Sansa,” he said, one more time, and then drew a deep and shuddering breath. “Will you shave me?” he asked and Theon’s voice was suddenly very small and very far away.

It felt like a blow to Sansa’s heart, and it made her draw in her breath with a sudden deep gasp, tears springing to her eyes.

“Theon,” she said. And then, “ _Theon._ Are you sure? Really sure?”

It felt like an age passed as Theon sat motionless, his eyes closed, his face drained of colour. But finally he opened his eyes, grey-blue with the storm of his thoughts and nodded.

Sansa couldn’t stop the noise that escaped her throat, a strangled half-sob that she cut short as quickly as she could, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth.

In all the time they had been together (how long now? Sometimes it felt like a lifetime, sometimes like the first few days of love’s new flush) Theon had never let anyone else shave him. Cut his hair, yes, but let someone else lay a razor against his skin? Sansa had done her best to erase Ramsay Bolton from the earth and its memory, but watching the terrified hectic pall of her husband’s face at each stroke of a blade across his skin, even when wielded by himself, had let her know that some memories had been carved in too deep to ever be expunged.

It was why she left him now, when he shaved, gave him privacy. She had never expected, not in all the days of her life, for him to ask this of her.

Her hands were shaking, but with a conscious effort, Sansa stilled them. The barber had trained her properly, at least, and she knew she could undertake the task with a certain skill.

“I’m going to put the towel on you,” she said gently. Theon nodded, his eyes suddenly huge in his face, holding hers. Sansa held his gaze as she dipped the towel in the hot water, wrung it out and then, ever so gently, draped it over Theon’s face, twisting it so his mouth and nose were clear.

“Is it too hot?” she asked as she felt his body flinch beneath her hands, a jump of muscle. Theon shook his head, and Sansa reached down and gripped his hand in hers, felt the terrified tremble that ran through it. “If you need me to stop, you just need to say,” she said.

“Don’t,” said Theon, hoarsely. “Stop. Don’t stop. I need… I need…” his voice trailed away, the sentence unfinished, but Sansa understood. The need to be past this, the need to break this chain. She had her own chains that Ramsay Bolton had installed, and it was only because of Theon’s infinite patience that she had slowly shed them.

Carefully, with no fast movements, Sansa removed the towel from Theon’s face. “I’m going to put the soap on now,” she explained. No surprises, everything made clear. She took the bristle brush in hand, dipped it in the water, swirled it carefully across the top of the soap the barber had given her until a strong lather built up. She held the brush up so Theon could see it clearly and then touched it gently to his cheek. Slowly, carefully, she lathered his face, working around his short, trim beard and over the softer, scragglier hairs pushing through on his cheeks and neck.

Stepping back, Sansa viewed her work with some kind of satisfaction, then her breath hitched in her throat at the terrified look in Theon’s eyes. But he nodded at her, permission to go on.

“I’m going to pick up the razor now,” Sansa said calmly, using every ounce of the self-control she’d learned as Queen of the North. Seeing her husband so terrified was breaking her heart, but there was not a single thing that showed on her face or in her demeanour. “If you want me to, I’ll put it near your face. I will stop any time you ask. You are in complete control of what I do. I love you, Theon Greyjoy, with all of my heart and I will _never_ hurt you.”

This time, his nod was the slightest movement of his head, but it was enough and she reached over carefully and picked up the razor, flicking it open as far away as she could. Slowly, and very obviously, she moved it, watching as Theon’s eyes tracked it until it was too close to him to follow. As gently as a feather falling to earth, she touched the blunt back of it to his cheek.

She thought that would be the end of it for a moment. All colour drained from Theon’s face, his eyes snapping shut. His hands clutched the end of the chair arms so tightly she feared he may actually break them, and his hips bucked reflexively, an instinctive attempt to escape. For a second Sansa debated whipping the razor away, stopping this, but then Theon opened his eyes, caught hers. “Don’t,” he said again. “Don’t stop. I need to…”

Sansa drew in a deep breath, using Theon’s need for her to be strong to still her own rising panic. “Is his voice inside your head?” she asked, thinking back to how it felt for her when certain actions brought Ramsay roaring back to life, tipping her entire world suddenly into chaos.

“Yes,” responded Theon, barely able to get the word out.

“Then let’s drown the bastard out,” she said. Sansa leaned down until her forehead rested on Theon’s, their eyes meeting, hers green, his a dark abyss of terror. “I love you,” she said. “I will never hurt you. I love you. I will never hurt you.” She continued to repeat the words, a soft litany.

It took an eternity, but slowly some sense of time and place seeped back into Theon’s gaze. He swallowed thickly. “I know,” he whispered, eventually.

“I’m going to start now,” replied Sansa. “I love you,” she said, drawing the first stroke of the razor down Theon’s cheek. “I will never hurt you,” she continued, drawing the skin tight again, and making the second stroke.

She could not look at his eyes, as shaving him so carefully took all of her attention, but she felt the intensity of his gaze upon her, keeping himself anchored in the present, stopping the past from swallowing him whole. She did not stop her litany once, another anchor in the now.

I love you. I will never hurt you.

She worked her way around both cheeks, then made him lift his chin and shaved his neck and throat. She had thought it would be worse there, but Theon’s breathing noticeably calmed. When she realised why, Sansa felt a hole open up inside her and her world fall in. A razor to the throat was a killing blow, and Ramsay had never had any intention of killing Theon. Not when he was still so much fun to play with.

For a single fierce instant, Sansa wished she could bring Ramsay back to life, so she could feed him to his dogs again.

None of it showed on her face and her litany did not falter. She kept it up until she had finished the last sweep of the razor, re-wet the towel and used it to clean soap and lather and stray hairs from Theon’s face.

She leaned forward again, touched her forehead to his, caught his eyes with hers. “I love you,” she said. “I will never hurt you.”

He reached up, his trembling hand touching her cheek lightly. She leaned back then, stepped back slightly to let him get out of the chair. He made an attempt to get up, and then his legs gave way beneath him and he slid helplessly to the floor, clutching at her waist to try and stop himself, but Sansa wasn’t strong enough to hold them both up.

That was how she finds herself now, sprawled on the floor of the solar, sitting hunched over her husband, her hands soothing his hair as he sobs into her skirts with the desperate, wrenching cries of a lost and broken little boy.

She doesn’t know how long it takes for the storm of weeping to pass. She catches the door opening in the corner of her eye, her maid look in, but the girl was both clever and discreet and quickly withdrew. Slowly Theon calms until he is lying still and quiet beneath her soothing hands.

“I needed to do that,” he says.

“I know,” she replies and she truly does know and it’s the reason they fit together so well. The reason there would never be anyone else for her.

Theon moves then, slides up until he is next to her. She lies back and he nestles his head into her shoulder and they stare up into the spring light for a while in peaceful silence.

Eventually she slides down a little turning on her side to look at him. Her eyes are soft for a moment, and then take on a clinical look as her hand strokes Theon’s cheek. “I did a damned fine job,” she says. “For a first go.”

Theon raises an eyebrow at her. “Good to know my Queen doesn’t subscribe to false modesty,” he says, and he sounds like himself again. Sansa grins and kisses the end of his nose.

He drops his head onto her shoulder again, closing his eyes in contentment for a moment. She has just started to think that, lovely as this is, the floor is really quite hard beneath her back when he says, “Sansa.”

“Yes, Theon?” she replies.

“I’m fairly certain I’ve covered your skirts in snot,” he says. “Like, really a lot of snot.” His voice is the mixture of apology and mischief that she knows so well.

She tries to be outraged for a second, but then she laughs and after a moment, Theon joins in.

And Sansa knows that everything is going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be an occasional series as I think of gifts that these two can give to each other. I have another couple already planned, but feel free to throw me prompts if you’d like, because writing these two gives me life. Plus I’m having fun exploring where I’ve decided the world ends up :)


	3. The Accidental Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, deftly, without him even noticing, Sansa turned the running of Winterfell over to Theon, to allow her time to manage her duties as Queen.

The Accidental Gift

Theon Greyjoy had decided when he was ten that, excepting Robb Stark, everyone in Winterfell hated him.

It was a very bad decision with little evidence to support it, and it led to some very unpleasant consequences later on, but Theon still found it difficult to let go of it. Even now that he was married to the Lady of Winterfell, Queen in the North and was, technically, a Prince of Winterfell.

He had spent quite a lot of time after his recovery from the wound the Night King had inflicted on him apologising to people he remembered from when he was young (including quite a number of kitchen maids) when he encountered them. He was at least mildly surprised that no-one had waylaid him in a quiet hallway prior to his wedding and stabbed him, to save their Lady from him. Even now, after all this time, he carried the conviction in him that everyone who he knew in Winterfell thought he was a somewhat embarrassing failure.

“It’s amazing,” said Sansa, in the acerbic way she had that generally cut through his more ridiculously self-pitying moments, “how you manage to never hear them call you the hero of the Godswood.”

He had had no choice but to acknowledge her point, because he had been introduced at more than one state visit by that sobriquet and there was that truly embarrassing song that someone had composed about the whole thing. But old habits of mind were hard to break and the feeling persisted, no matter how many faces Sansa pulled at him when he mentioned it.

That was why he was surprised when, not long after his marriage to Sansa, the people of Winterfell began to bring their problems to him. At first he had wanted to refer them to Sansa, but he realised how busy she was and so he solved the ones that he could, even those he had to go away and research thoroughly to try and unknot the strings of old feuds and the intricacies of the rules that related to farming on the commons. “Do you have any idea,” he had said to Sansa once, as he lay with his head in her lap, her fingers running through his hair, “how many problems goats cause? I mean, who would farm goats? They’re menaces. They don’t respect the rules _at all_.”

He loved the sound of Sansa’s laugh.

Some of the more complex or delicate issues, he did bring to her and they grew used to conversations late at night, picking apart what punishment was appropriate for a cycle of vengeful sheep stealing between two feuding families, or how to manage the issues arising from the wildling incursions at the northernmost edge of Stark territory or even such mundane but difficult matters as what priority plumbing repairs took in the keep’s budget. In return, Sansa sought his advice on the larger affairs of state that she kept having to manage, using him as a sounding board on the matters of Westeros, such as how exactly one replaced the role of Castle Black in managing large cohorts of disaffected young men when the Wall was now fallen or how to assist in rebuilding Dornish society from the destruction wrought upon its ruling family.

Slowly, deftly, without him even noticing, Sansa turned the running of Winterfell over to Theon, to allow her time to manage her duties as Queen.

Theon, because sometimes even Sansa would roll her eyes affectionately at how stubbornly dumb he could be, still thought they all hated him. Just a bit. Secretly.

***

“It’s… a kitten,” said Theon, dubiously.

“Yes, my Lord,” responded the woman. “A fishing cat kit. There’s not many of them round and they’re valuable if you can train them up to stay with you. I wasn’t fast enough to catch the boys that killed its mother and I’m leaving today to visit my daughter in Riverrun, so I can’t be looking after it meself. I thought if anyone would know what to do with it, it’d be you and her Grace.” With a deft move, the woman popped the kitten into Theon’s lap and before he could do more than make a face at it, she’d gone.

He looked at the kitten, who looked up at him blearily. Theon, who had some vague experience with ship’s cats, realised it was just old enough to open its eyes, but not much older. He also realised that was about the extent of his practical and theoretical knowledge.

This, Theon decided, was a crisis of the scale that definitely demanded the immediate attention of the Queen.

Luckily, he knew she was in their chambers looking after some correspondence and he made his way there as fast as he could, cradling the kitten cautiously in his hands. Keep it warm seemed a probably useful thing to do, so he held it close against his chest, the warmest thing he could think to do.

“She gave me a kitten,” he said, rather helplessly, from the open door of Sansa’s study.

She looked up from where she writing and arched a perfect eyebrow at him and his burden. “Who gave you a kitten?” she asked.

Theon made some limited hand gestures to indicate short, broad, woman, gone. “She left it with me,” he said, somewhat forlornly.

“And what do you plan to do about that?”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “I don’t know anything about kittens.”

“Nothing?” Sansa responded.

“I grew up on the Iron Islands,” shot back Theon. “My father would have told me to drown it. And probably would have told me it would toughen me up and insulted me a bit.”

Sansa rolled her eyes in memory of Balon Greyjoy and took the kitten out of Theon’s hands.

“Oh,” she exclaimed in delight. “It’s a fishing cat. Theon could you head down to the kitchen and ask the cook to warm up some goat’s milk. Just a little and just to body temperature. And I’ll need a basket and some rough cloths and a warming pan.”

For the next few weeks, Theon watched as Sansa added substitute kitten mother to her duties as Queen. Patiently, Sansa taught the kitten to suck from a cloth dipped in warm goat’s milk, and then even more patiently taught Theon how to do it, so they could share the nightly feeds. She kept it warm, making sure that the servants knew to always keep the warming pan and basket to just the right temperature. She carefully helped it and made sure it was safe as it began to explore its surroundings and she found scraps and threads from her embroidery box for it to play with. She even managed to conduct a full scale state visit with an ambassador from The Reach while feeding a kitten beneath the table. If the ambassador had thought this strange, he didn’t dare to mention it to the face of the Queen.

At the end of another day,Theon watched as Sansa settled the kitten into its bed, happily satiated from its feeding and ready to let them have at least a few hours rest. Sansa turned to find him looking at her with quiet adoration written on his face.

“They certainly knew the right person to hand it on to,” he said quietly. “They knew you’d take care of it.”

For an instant, Sansa cocked her head to the side, deciding if this was the right time to have this conversation.

“They didn’t give the kitten to me,” she pointed out. “They gave the kitten to you.”

Theon got that stubborn look on his face again, the one that said he was definitely going to cling to a stupid idea for as long as he could, because that was the way he rolled. “Just to pass on to you,” he said. “It’s not like anyone would think I’d know what to do with it.”

“Like you wouldn’t know how to fix Brend and Ed’s feud that’s been going on for the last seven years until you sorted them out? Like you couldn’t work out who had the right of it when Arkon’s work fell in on young Lyssa? Like you haven’t been making things better for the life of everyone in Winterfell since you came back to fight for us? That they don’t know that you’re good and kind and just?” Sansa’s gaze was very level.

“Sansa,” Theon’s voice was touched with a quiet anguish. “You know what I did to Winterfell. To the Starks. There’s no way they could forgive me.”

“Theon Greyjoy.” Sansa used his full name, as she was prone to do when she was heading to somewhere close to annoyed with him. “You aren’t even close to the worst thing that happened to Winterfell since those damned Lannisters came visiting. You made some terrible mistakes, but you weren’t Ramsay bloody Bolton flaying half the men and women between here and the sea. You think they only remember the bad things but they know what happened to you and you don’t think they were horrified by that? They know you saved me, when you couldn’t save yourself. And then you come back to protect them from the Night King’s army when you have no need to do so and you turn into the hero of the Godswood and save Bran long enough for Arya to get there and save us all? When the entire Dothraki army couldn’t last five minutes! You think they don’t know why I chose to marry you? Because they bring their problems to you and you treat them fairly and justly and kindly and you care about getting it right? They haven’t just forgiven you. They love you, you idiot boy.”

She unravelled him so easily.

When the knots inside his head were so tangled and interwoven that he couldn’t see how to undo them, she would reach in and pull one thread and unravel him and suddenly everything was clear again. Different. Easier.

Theon reached up and grabbed Sansa’s wrist, pulling her down so she straddled his lap. “And I love you,” he said and kissed her gently before burying his face in her shoulder. His world had shifted beneath his feet and he would take a few moments to steady himself.

But being Theon Greyjoy, he couldn’t set aside the chance for one last attempt to make himself feel bad, and his thoughts turned melancholy.

“I just wish…” he started and then trailed off.

“Wish what?” said Sansa when he didn’t continue.

“Watching you,” he said. “With the kitten. With your subjects. Knowing how much you wanted a family when you were a little girl. I wish… I wish I could be everything you wanted me to be. The father of your children.”

“You are everything I want you to be,” responded Sansa, softly.

“You could have chosen differently,” he said. “Married someone who could give you children. What your heart wanted…”

Even sitting straddled in Theon’s lap, Sansa Stark drawing herself up to her full height was an impressive sight. Her eyes were suddenly icy, her face set in stone. “Don’t you _dare_ tell me what my heart wants,” she said, and her voice was as cold as the stones of Winterfell.

Theon stared at her, eyes widening in astonishment. His voice, when it came out, was suddenly pitched higher. “Did you just… _Queen_ at me?” he asked breathlessly.

“By the old gods and the new and even that sparkly one the Red Woman believed in, when are you going to stop telling me that I chose wrong when I chose you?” replied Sansa. “How many times do I have to tell you that you deserve me? Deserve happiness? It gets… wearing.”

Theon looked closely at Sansa, suddenly aware in a way he hadn’t been before of how his continual self-doubt wore down at her. She always reassured him but he hadn’t even thought of how much that reassurance might cost her.

“I… make you happy,” said Theon and for the very first time it wasn’t a question. For the very first time, he thought he might believe it. Now and always.

“Theon Greyjoy, last son of Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands, Prince of Winterfell, I couldn’t know you were alive in the world and not be with you and be happy,” replied Sansa. “Content, yes, satisfied, useful. But you make me happy. You bring me joy.” She leaned back slightly and poked him in the chest for emphasis for each of her last words. “You. DELIGHT. Me.”

Theon’s eyes closed for a moment, and then his hands gripped Sansa’s waist and he surged out of the chair. One moment Sansa was sitting in his lap, the next moment her back was against wall of her chamber, her legs wrapped around her husband’s waist, her skirts rucked up high by his hands travelling up her thighs. She gasped as his teeth sank lightly into the skin of her neck, where her pulse beat wild, and then up, a trail of hot kisses that ended with his teeth skimming her ear.

He leaned back for a moment to look at her and suddenly she saw something that hadn’t been in his expression for so many years, not since the Lannisters. Something almost arrogant, and definitely, decidedly obscene, but without that edge of anger that had always underlain it when he was young.

“Sansa Stark,” said Theon, his breath hot in her ear, his fingers already doing obscene things under her smallclothes, “I’m going to delight the ever-loving _fuck_ out of you tonight.”

***

The cook noted that Queen Sansa and Lord Theon were particularly late coming down to breakfast that morning. So late that she had sent the maid off with the hot food to give to the stable lads and served cold porridge to her Grace and her Lord.

She also noticed that the Queen had very dark circles beneath her eyes and his Lordship’s hands trembled as he picked up his tea. He thanked her courteously as ever, of course, but his smile was different this time. Warmer. She’d always thought he’d looked a bit afraid of her, but that was a ridiculous thing to think about the hero of the Godswood.

Must be the kitten, thought the cook, who knew all about the pain of night feeds.

“Are you keeping the kitten, Lady Sansa?” she asked.

Sansa smiled. “As long as it will have me,” she said. Fishing cats weren’t prone to taming and it would stay as long as it chose and no longer.

“Do you have a name for it?” asked the cook.

Sansa smiled, catching Theon’s eye until he smiled back at her. “Yes,” she replied. “Her name is Delight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had to get this one out, because it was demanding to be written. As you can see, these are not in chronological sequence - the timeline will jump around as and when the particular chapter demands. Next chapter won’t be along for a while due to life demands, but hopefully I’ll have time to respond to feedback soon (it’s all been so lovely, too!)


	4. The Gift Of A Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His first thought, incongruously, was ~And they think Arya is the dangerous one.~

The Gift of a Death

When he was conscious again, but still confined to his bed, Sansa would bring all the courier and raven reports at the beginning of the day and read them to him, so he would know how the war in the south went. When Tyrion sent through information about the disposition of the Iron Fleet, Theon and Sansa would plot their course on the map she brought to him and Theon would provide advice on what he expected Euron to do, based on his past history, and suggest countermeasures. As the war went on and the siege of King’s Landing continued, he and Sansa began to offer further suggestions about the conduct of battles and skirmishes as well as supply and reconnaissance missions, suggestions that were taken seriously by Jon and Tyrion (if less so by Daenerys). Neither of them considered themselves warriors these days, but both of them had learned a great deal in their lives about how, and how not, to fight a war.

Yara’s messages to Theon were shorter and sharper and may have used colourful language to describe exactly what she thought of Theon and his stupid damned fucking heroics but they made Sansa laugh when he read them to her. Yara offered to send her fastest ships to bring him back to the Iron Islands, even though no-one needed a bolthole from the dead these days, but he declined. He cited his health but Yara told him in no uncertain terms exactly why he was staying and that he had his head up his fucking arse if he didn’t do something about it while he had the chance. He didn’t read that message to Sansa. He may have dunked it in his breakfast porridge and eaten it in a panic to make sure she never read it: not that he’d ever confess to that but it disappeared completely and Sansa never knew it had existed.

When Theon was well enough to start moving around the castle, Sansa brought him to the audience chamber, where he sat quietly behind her, listening to the discussions about the provisioning of Winterfell, how to organise supplies to be sent south, management of the wounded who had begun to trickle back in fits and starts. She sought his counsel often and he didn’t know quite why she chose to, but he took her seriously and his answers were always thoughtful. At first he tired easily, and when he did, she would escort him back to his chambers and stay sitting with him quietly until he had settled fully into sleep. Over time, he was able to stay longer and eventually she made him move up his seat, so he sat beside her at the audience table.

When the maesters agreed that it was time for Theon to start exercising to get stronger, Sansa accompanied him on his walks about the keep. They talked about old memories, when they were children together, their stupid childhood games and the fun they’d had before the world had come crashing in. There were some places they did not go and neither of them spoke of the last time they were in the keep together. They kept their topics light and sweet with summer memories and the maesters were pleased to sometimes hear laughter echoing down the halls.

The snow kept them confined to the keep for a long time – even when it was only a light dusting, the maesters said that Theon could not risk catching a chill.

But finally there came a day when there was no snow and the sun shone brightly overhead, the air almost warm.

“I want to go to the Godswood,” said Theon to Sansa.

She glanced at him sharply, but his face was resolute and she bit her lip and nodded.

Carefully they made their way out through the slush that lay at the entrance to the Godswood, where the paths went from stone to dirt. Theon was almost healed now, but nobody wanted to risk him falling. They started by strolling around the perimeter, Sansa almost but not quite trying to steer Theon away from the heart tree, where he had come so close to dying.

But he would have none of it, and slowly they circled inwards, to the clearing around the heart tree. The clearing where the Night King had nearly gutted him and left him drowning in his own blood until Arya had gathered him up and brought him home.

They stopped and Theon looked around him and gave a sigh. “It’s alright,” he said, half to himself and half to Sansa. “I can be here.” He could close his eyes and the memories were there, the wights, the Night King, Bran’s words, but even the memory of the spear going into him was not particularly distressing. It was a battle. He had fought hard and made all of his own choices and that was what he needed.

Unlike other times. Unlike other memories.

“How did Ramsay die?” asked Theon, quietly. “They told me he was dead, died at the Battle of the Bastards, but no-one seems to know how.” Something inside him had stopped when he was told; frozen still in something like panic. He still didn’t understand what his reaction was.

Sansa turned to face Theon, as if she’d expected him to one day ask this question and was not particularly surprised that he asked it today. “Jon was beating him to death. Afterwards. After what he did to Rickon. I made Jon give him to me instead.” Not through words, but her presence and her prior, far greater, claim. “I took him to the kennels and I waited until he woke up and then I fed him to his dogs.” The smile she gave him was small and gleeful and utterly savage and only Theon would ever see it, because only he would understand. “They ate his face first. He died screaming.”

His first thought, incongruously, was _~And they think Arya is the dangerous one.~_

And then he made a noise, a great exhalation of breath that could have been a laugh or a sob and it turned into laughter that he couldn’t stop. It went on so long that his legs stopped being able to support him and he sank to his knees, his face in his hands, his laughter teetering on the edge of hysteria. Finally, a long time later, with another gasp that could have been half a sob, Theon managed to stop himself.

“Oh gods,” he gasped. “He’s dead. He’s dead. I never have to go back there. We never have to go back there. We escaped. We actually escaped.” A great shudder ran through his whole body, a release of a tension that had been part of him for years.

Sansa was standing in front of him. She had waited patiently, letting Theon’s reaction run its course, as hers had so long ago. “We escaped,” she repeated back to him. “You saved me.”

He rocked back on his heels, looking up at this woman he’d known since she was a little girl and his smile was like the sun coming up. “Oh Sans,” he said, her old nickname. “I could kiss for you doing that.”

“I wish you would,” she said softly and Theon’s world stopped still again.

“Sansa?” he asked.

She looked at him and then at the ground. “I’ve had two husbands and fed one of them to his dogs,” she said. “And I could count the number of times I’ve been kissed on the fingers of one hand. I’ve never been kissed by a man because he’s in love with me. And I’ve never kissed a man because I’m in love with him.” She drew a steadying breath, still not quite looking at him. “Are you in love with me, Theon? Because I am very much in love with you.”

He could think of a hundred reasons to say no, to stop everything complicated that would fall out of saying yes, a hundred ways to break her heart gently. Not one of them would have been the truth.

He rose to his feet, his hand catching hers, his other cupping the side of her face like it was the most precious thing in the world. She was of a height with him now, so it took only the slightest tilt of his head to touch his mouth to hers, as soft as snowflakes at first, until she opened her lips greedily under his. She was inexpert, it was true, too rough, a clash of front teeth and her tongue too eager, but he remembered still how to do this and he gentled her slightly, paced her, slowed her, taught her the nuance of what he liked, tried to work out what she liked. He had thought that he would wince when her probing tongue touched the gaps in the back of his mouth where he’d had his broken teeth removed, but somehow it didn’t matter at all. All that mattered was falling into the taste of her and the shape of her lips as she smiled beneath his mouth and kissed him back.

Theon Greyjoy kissed Sansa Stark in the centre of the Godswood, in front of the heart tree. The gods looked on and they did not disapprove.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to break up the beginning of Theonsa, as it’s going to be very complex to write and I really want to cover the trauma/triggers/healing in an appropriate, complex and compassionate way, as they work through a LOT of trauma around these issues. So this is only the very beginning of that and it will be broken up far more than I originally planned. 
> 
> I’m also likely to be crazy busy for the immediate future, but I couldn’t NOT write this bit!


	5. Sleep Is A Gift The Gods Gave Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wake alone, with no one to hold me or comfort me or tell me that it will be alright, that the monster is dead. I would like someone to tell me the monster is dead."

Sleep Is A Gift The Gods Gave Us

 

She had had his things moved into the chamber next to hers. When he had protested that she hadn’t asked him, her response was, “Of course I didn’t. You would have said no.”

“Of course I would have said no!” responded Theon.

“Why?” she asked.

He actually managed a mildly offended splutter, which made Sansa’s lips curl up at the edges. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I did grow up with you,” she pointed out. “Since when did you ever care about what was proper?”

“Since… since…” Theon paused and admitted defeat. “Since it’s about you,” he said quietly. “Your reputation. I don’t want you to risk that for me.”

Sansa gave the smallest of shrugs. “Then you shouldn’t have become my most trusted counsellor. Or made me fall ridiculously, stupidly, besottedly in love with you. Because I find both of those things rather more important than my reputation right now.”

“The second one tends to be more of a problem when it comes to reputation than the first,” pointed out Theon, though he couldn’t stop the small and fatuous grin that danced on his lips.

“Are you going to try and sneak your things back into your old chambers when I’m busy?” said Sansa, with a matching grin.

Theon opened his mouth to reply in vehement denial and shut it when he realised that was exactly, probably, what he would have tried to do once he’d thought of it.

“If you even think about trying that,” said Sansa, with that smug look she got on her face when she was outmanoeuvring him, “I’ll give every single person in the keep orders that they’re to come and tell me if they see you carrying things anywhere. I am the Lady of Winterfell and I’m very good at getting my way.”

The only way he’d found over the last few weeks to remove that smug look was to kiss Sansa until her expression melted into something else altogether. So that’s what Theon did.

He was fairly certain he had lost this round, but he found he didn’t really mind when losing felt like this.

***

They had been discussing the difficulties of keeping the supply lines to King’s Landing open and how to manage them to also allow the wounded to return without wasting man or horse power. When they had turned to whether there was the option to use a fleet of small boats to manage a part of the route, the last maester had begged his leave from their discussion, citing the expertise of Lord Theon as being far beyond his as well as the lateness of the hour. Sansa and Theon had continued the discussion for some time afterwards, developing a list of small steadings and fisherfolk who may be able to assist. When it finally wound down, the candles were guttering low.

It was then that Theon seemed to suddenly notice that he was in his chambers, late at night, alone, with Sansa. “Well,” he said, his voice a pitch higher than he intended. “Time for you to go back to your bed, then, Sans,” he said, because a panicking Theon was as subtle as a brick.

Sansa’s left eyebrow rose at him in a hint of mockery and then her expression changed and she looked down as her hands, clasped lightly in her lap. “I would like to stay, Theon,” she said, quietly. “May I stay with you?”

A complex range of emotions rose in Theon’s chest, until it felt like they were strangling him from the inside. “You know…” he began. “I don’t… what Ramsay did…”

Sansa shook her head, hoping she had correctly grasped his meaning (there was so much Ramsay  _ did _ ). “Just to sleep,” she said. “I’d like to sleep next to you. With you. In your arms.” She smiled at herself then, then looked up, bestowing that smile on Theon. “That stupid girl full of romantic stories isn’t quite all gone yet. I want to sleep in the arms of the man I love.”

He probably could have held firm if it hadn’t been for that smile, and the need behind it that caused Sansa’s lower lip to tremble slightly.

“I have… sometimes my sleep isn’t peaceful,” said Theon. “It happens less often now, but sometimes I… don’t wake well.”

“As do I,” replied Sansa. “And I wake alone, with no one to hold me or comfort me or tell me that it will be alright, that the monster is dead. I would like someone to tell me the monster is dead.” Her voice was very small suddenly and Theon couldn’t help but reach out and gently touch her cheek, offer what comfort he could.

“Stay, Sansa,” he said. “But,” he drew in a breath, “would you give me time to change? Alone?”

She remembered suddenly, as clear as the day it happened, when Myranda had led her to the kennels and she had seen Theon for the first time. He’d looked at her and actually seen her and that gesture she’d barely noticed at the time (lost in sudden horror), hiding his hand, his maimed hand, away from her. 

“Of course,” she said. “My shift is in my room. I’ll knock.” She looked at him. “Please open the door for me when I knock, Theon. Please.” She knew shame, knew it deep in her bones and she knew what it made you do, the comfort it made you reject.

“I promise,” he said.

He held to his promise. When she knocked on his door a quarter hour later, he opened it. She should have felt shy, she thought, standing before him in her shift, but he had seen her in far less than that, and she felt almost bold.

But Theon - Theon wore his sleeping clothes like armour. Soft shirt, soft trews, sleeves so long his hands were hidden. There was not an inch of scarred flesh to see, other than those few small ones he wore on his face. 

He had opened his door and that was what mattered.

“Well,” said Sansa, after a few moments of awkward silent lingering in the doorway. “It’s very late and I’m very tired and maybe I could come in?”

Theon grinned, a breaking of tension, and a light blush spread across his cheeks. He moved aside, letting Sansa in, and then took her hand and led her into his bedchamber, snuffing out the lamps along the way.

“That looks very comfortable,” said Sansa, looking at Theon’s bed, soft lit by the small lamp beside the bed. The maids had mentioned it, but she hadn’t seen it before, piled high with pillows and comforters and furs, enough to make a nest for a grown man to burrow into.

“I get cold,” replied Theon, but it was so much more than that. It had been his first act of defiance against the Ramsay that had lived in his head - to claim back the right to sleep in a bed, to have comfort, after years of sleeping on an icy kennel floor. Even in his cabin on  _ Black Wind _ , he had managed to make his narrow bunk almost luxurious - two of the usual thin mattresses instead of one, a pile of blankets to curl under, three pillows. Yara had nearly said something when she first saw it, some scoffing remark about Ironborn and luxury, but she’d cut the words off abruptly before they left her mouth. She remembered where they’d found him and some part of her understood. 

And he did get cold. So many things had been broken and never allowed to heal right, that they ached now when the cold got into them. And the cold got into them often.

Sansa nodded and, looking at the bed, could easily work out what side Theon slept on. This wasn’t, she decided, going to get less awkward if she waited for him, so she let go of Theon’s hand, made her way around the bed and slid in under the covers, nestling in under the furs. She looked up at Theon and smiled and, freeing a hand, patted the bed next to her. “Join me?” she asked.

The look he gave her made her heart sing in her chest, the softest adoration. “You are ridiculously beautiful,” he said and leaned down to touch her lips gently with his own. Then he snuffed out the lamp, lifted the covers and slid in beside her.

For an instant, as his hand touched hers, Sansa froze. ~ _ It’s Theon,~  _ she reminded herself. ~ _ Theon!~  _ and the worst of it passed.

They were both side sleepers, she knew that, so she turned away from him, curled up into her customary half moon shape. There was silence and stillness for a moment and then tentatively Theon’s hand touched her waist and then curved over her, holding her gently, until he felt her relax back against the length of him. He curled up then, fitting the length of his legs to hers, his cheek touching the back of her neck so lightly.

She froze again, the length of her suddenly still and inside her head it was Ramsay’s heavy weight against her back, the feel of the horror that was her wedding night and so many nights after. Behind her, he was behind her, and her body clenched tight, waiting for the tearing pain to start. Waiting for the shame to start.

Except, except, it was Theon’s voice she heard, no taunts, no instructions, no shaming, just, “He’s dead, Sansa, the monster is dead, it’s me and you’re safe and I’ll never hurt you,” and he had never hurt her. He had never even touched her then, but she suddenly remembered that there would be small, soft washcloths, dipped in water, warmed as they sat concealed beneath the bowl with the steaming breakfast he delivered to her each morning after ( _ after, before, every day, no ending to it _ ) and she suddenly knew,  _ she knew _ , that Theon had stolen them for her, risked punishment at Ramsay’s hands if he’d ever known that she was given even that tiny scrap of comfort, the ability to wash away the stains Ramsay left on her.

Sansa’s breath left her in a juddering sigh and she felt her muscles unlock. She lay her hand over Theon’s where it rested on her stomach. “I know,” she said and she did know, deep inside her. She would be safe.

It took time for her to fall asleep, woken again by the terror that had coursed through her. She heard Theon’s breathing grow deep and regular and his arm grew heavy as he relaxed in sleep. Softly, trying not to wake him, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed it gently and then settled back against his warm presence and allowed herself to drift away.

Neither of them woke in the night and if they dreamed, neither of them remembered it in the morning.

***

It became their nightly ritual - to wait until Winterfell went silent, and then the soft pad of Sansa’s feet outside his door. He waited for her, would let her in and then hold her until they both drifted into dreamless sleep.

“Sleep is a gift the gods gave us,” Theon whispered into her hair one moonlit night as they drifted away. “Sleep without dreams.”

She made a sleepy, questioning noise, keeping herself awake to hear what he said.

“When there was no escape, no escape from any of it, the pain, the hurting, the terror, there was sleep,” he whispered. “I couldn’t even die. He wouldn’t let me. But I could sleep. It was the only escape I had. The gods gave me that, at least.”

She turned over sleepily, cupped his cheek with her hand, kissed him softly and was asleep within seconds.

Theon looked down at her, her face nestled into his chest and said, his voice full of wonder, “And then the gods gave me you, Sansa Stark.”

He did not attempt to fool himself - he knew that Sansa’s visits to his room were no secret. Winterfell was not that large and the smallfolk always knew everything that was going on, no matter how well Lords and Ladies thought they kept their secrets. He knew he should care more for their reputations - her reputation, because he thought his wasn’t worth anything anyway - and that he should stop this before news of it travelled to Jon in the South and caused - complications.

Sansa smiled in her sleep and murmured softly against his chest and he knew that this was a blessing he could not give up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this ended up being broken apart quite differently from what I expected. I’m hoping to get the next three chapters out quickly because they’re very intertwined and also demanding to be written.
> 
> As you may have noticed, my war is not the same as the Tv show war. It’s a much more traditional siege of King's Landing with no nuclear option Dany after she’s had, like, a bad day or two.


	6. A Gift From Dorne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When I was a girl, I’d watch you and Jon and Robb training. They were always so dark, but you glowed golden, Theon.” She watched the play of lamp light across his hair, his face, his torso, lean with muscle from the training he had taken up again now he was healed. “You still glow golden.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is where the smut starts.
> 
> Also, a trigger warning: there is a short paragraph where past sexual assault is described, not in great detail but sufficient that people who need to take care should be aware of it.

A Gift From Dorne 

Sansa woke in the night and Theon was not beside her.

It had only been, what, weeks, a month or two, since she had been making her way to his room each night and yet she felt his absence instantly, a space where he should have been. His bedchamber was dark, but she could see the low light of a lamp from the antechamber. Gathering one of the furs from the bed around her, she made her way to the doorway between the rooms.

Theon sat in one of the chairs in his antechamber, a lamp beside him, rubbing at his hands. She watched him quietly for a few minutes, drawing no attention to herself, watching him stretch and flex his fingers, as he took something (an ointment?) from a small pot on the table beside him and rubbed it into his palms.

She didn’t want to startle him, so she tried to make herself obvious without calling out his name. She rustled the fur over her shoulders, moved her feet restlessly on the floor. But it took her gently clearing her throat before he looked up from where he was concentrating on his hands.

“You weren’t there,” she said in explanation when he raised his eyes to hers.

He looked at her for a moment and then dropped his eyes to his hands. “They ache sometimes,” he said. “When the cold gets into them. This helps.” He nodded at the pot beside him. “Massaging them.”

She debated walking over to him, stayed herself in the doorway. “May I help?” she asked softly. He looked up at her and she added, “I’d like to help.”

He looked at her for a few moments, then looked down at his hands again. “It’s cold out here,” he said inconsequentially. “I normally do this in bed.”

“Then come back to bed,” she said, “and let me help.”

He glanced at her and then stood. He gathered up his pot of ointment, and the lamp and followed her back into the bedroom. Putting the lamp down on the table beside his side of the bed, he slid back under the coverlets and furs, propping himself up on some pillows so he could sit upright, waiting until she slid in facing him. “They’re not… a pretty sight,” he said to Sansa, his hands still hidden beneath the coverlets.

“They’re you,” she replied and it was enough.

He gave her his hands, drawing them out from under the furs, leaving them on top of them passively. She looked at them, then picked them up in her own hands, allowed herself to examine them more closely. The right hand was more obvious, the missing finger, but there was more. She knew he’d had his nails torn out, and two had not grown back, a purple void on the back of those fingers. Between the bones of his hand, deep scars where Bolton’s men had driven thin knives, somehow leaving him the use of them. His ring finger knuckles swollen, where they’d been broken and allowed to set askew. And when she turned them over, on his right hand, the deepest scar in his palm, where a knife had been drawn through, on his left the central star where something had been driven deep.

“No wonder they ache,” she said, and dipped her fingers into the pot of ointment and began to slowly massage it into the deepest scars, feeling for where there was the most tension and trying to relieve it.Theon sighed as she worked on his aches, a release of pain. He had woken with them hurting suddenly and it was a deep pain, something simple warmth didn’t dispel. Yara had found the salve for him in a market; it was Essos-formed and the only thing that stopped the pain when it was at its worst.

“I saw,” said Sansa and stopped, her head bowed over his hands, not stopping with her ministrations. “When you were dying,” she started again, “after the Night King. I stayed with you. By your side. As much as I could. They… sometimes I was there when they changed your dressings.” She looked up from his hands to catch his eye. “I’ve seen your scars, Theon. Not… all of them. But you don’t need to protect me from them. You don’t need to show them to me, either. Not if you don’t want to. I just… I wanted you to know that I had seen them.”

Theon nodded, a slow acknowledgement of Sansa’s words. He wasn’t entirely sure of what his feelings were, but it helped a great deal that Sansa didn’t want him making decisions on imperfect knowledge. And that she made it very clear that he had choices.

“What would you like to do?” he asked Sansa.

“May I take your shirt off, Theon?” she responded. “It’s alright if you say no. We can just go back to sleep.”

It was clear that the choice was entirely his. She was seeking his permission, and that allowed him to nod.

Carefully Sansa put the lid back on the pot of salve, put it aside. Theon’s shirt was laced at the front and she drew out the knot, undid it, unlaced it as carefully as if she was handling a just gentled horse for the first time. When the lace was undone, her hands reached up, slid under the shirt and over his shoulders, slipping it easily off him.

He wanted to wince as she did so, but he schooled his face into calmness, waiting for the expression of disgust he expected on her face.

It didn’t come. Instead, as she looked at him under the lamp light, an expression of wonder crossed Sansa’s face. “You’ve always been so beautiful, Theon,” she said.

If she hadn’t been so serious, he would have laughed, a harsh and bitter bark. “Beautiful?” was all he managed.

“When I was a girl, I’d watch you and Jon and Robb training,” she replied. “They were always so dark, but you glowed golden, Theon.” She watched the play of lamp light across his hair, his face, his torso, lean with muscle from the training he had taken up again now he was healed. “You still glow golden.”

“Sansa,” he breathed, and it was half-anguish, half-wonder.

She looked at his face again. “You see what Ramsay wrote on you,” she said. “I see Theon. All of you. Neither of us is only what he made us. May I…” she lifted her hand slightly.

He nodded and she reached out, touched the line of scars that ran beneath his heart. “Maybe we can rewrite ourselves,” she whispered and leaning forward, pressed her mouth to the scar below the point of his left shoulder.

He leaned back then, watched as Sansa traced each scar with her fingers and then kissed them so gently. He hadn’t been with a woman in so long, not since Myranda and Violet ( _no, no, he could not complete that thought, could not go there, could never think on that night_ ), not for a very long time when it had been for pleasure. He watched Sansa’s hand blindly explore the star-shaped scar left above his right hip, where the Night King had spitted him. It intersected some of the wider, more gruesome scars that crossed his stomach, where Ramsey had flayed away wide strips of skin and left the wounds to fester and twist upon themselves as they sought to heal.

“Oh,” said Sansa suddenly, her hand stilling in its tracery of that scar. “May I…? Could you…?” Her hand made movements that asked him to turn and, slightly awkward as it was, he managed to twist and rearrange the furs until his back was to her.

“May I touch you?” she asked and he nodded and felt her fingers lightly touch the corresponding star on his back where the spear had come out. Then her fingers dropped lower and he felt her trace across his lower back, the mess of lines and ridges where he had been whipped. That had been Myranda’s particular pleasure and sometimes, as a treat, Ramsay would give her Theon to play with, not just some random kitchen maid or scullery boy.

He felt Sansa’s fingers falter as they traced that disaster area and suddenly he felt the weight as she pressed her face against his back, and felt her hot tears spill on to him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He knew that somehow this was personal and he would have turned to face Sansa, but her hands held him in place, deliberately, he thought. “Sansa, what’s wrong?” he asked, a slightly frantic edge in his voice.

“I said… I said…” she stopped, drew breath, started again. “When I didn’t understand, when I didn’t know how bad it could be, and I tried to get you to help me escape, and you couldn’t help me, I said that if I could do to you what Ramsay did, I would. I didn’t… I didn’t know this… didn’t know how much he could break people into pieces. I wish I had never said it.”

~ _Oh.~_ thought Theon. _~That_.~ It was too important to her to tell her that he barely remembered it. He’d been Reek then and each day had been an exhausting struggle to not say or do the wrong thing, the thing that would put him back on the cross, back under the knife. Insults and threats from anyone but Ramsay had barely registered across the stark terror that had been his life.

“Ramsay was poison,” he said. “He corrupted everything he touched, everyone in his power, the air he breathed. Nothing anyone said or did when they were touched by him counts.”

There was a still moment of silence behind him and then Sansa nodded against his back.

“He stole pleasure from me,” she said, still hiding from Theon, her voice soft against his back. “You know. You know what he did to me. Do you think… could we try? I would like to try again. I think,” and suddenly her voice was on the edge of panic, as if her boldness terrified her.

Theon turned, rearranged himself so he could face her. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked, gripping her hand tightly in his. “You know it won’t be… He took away those pieces...”

She didn’t quite look up at him but her hand squeezed his. “It’s not like I enjoyed what those “pieces” did to me,” she pointed out softly. “But I understand there are other options we could try.”

“We could,” replied Theon. “I may… have to stop. When he… _gelded_ me,” bitterness, wretched soaking bitterness in those words, “he gave me to Myranda first, to seduce me. I’m not sure… I may have to stop.”

Sansa breathed deep, still not looking at Theon’s face. “The first time I had my moon blood, he was so angry. No heirs for him, not yet. He held me down and forced himself in… in the back. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It was agony,” she suddenly stole a glance at Theon, aware that her pain was nothing compared to his, but there was nothing but sympathy in his eyes. “The next night he told me to use my mouth and to please him or he would do it again. I did everything I could do to please him. _Everything._  So he wouldn’t do that to me again. I thought I was strong, before that. I have never been so ashamed. He did that to me, Theon. Gave me pain and shame and nothing else. I want to _erase him,_ ” she said, and her voice was suddenly fierce. “Not just from the earth. I want to erase him from my body’s memory. Write pleasure over the top of everything he did to me.” She took a deep breath. “And you’re the only person I could trust enough to do that. Even to try.”

He nodded, gravely. “You could tell me,” he said. “What you’d like me to do. Be in control.”

Sansa looked at him and her lips quirked in an unhappy smile. “I don’t know what to ask for,” she said. “I wanted to be a lady and ladies don’t know about those things. The only person who ever told me what to do was Ramsay and I can’t… use his words.”

“Oh Sansa,” said Theon and suddenly smiled. “We are a ridiculous pair. How about I tell you what I would like to do and you can let me know if you want me to do that?”

Sansa nodded. “Then I’m going to kiss you to start with,” said Theon. A safe thing, a place to begin. He leaned forward slightly, his lips just touching Sansa’s and then slowly deepened the pressure, parted her lips with his tongue. His hands stole up, cupped her face and the kiss deepened, his tongue exploring, gentle flicks against the end of Sansa’s tongue, a swirl, a touch, withdraw and deepen again. He teased her until she began to respond, her tongue following his, seeking him out as he withdrew, until finally she began to smile under his mouth, to tease him back, a flicker of her tongue against his and away. He broke the kiss and smiled at her.

“I want to kiss your neck,” said Theon. His hand lightly touched the hollow inside her collarbone and trailed up the long muscle to her ear. “From here to here.” Sansa nodded, and he smiled. The most delicate touch of the tip of his tongue to the hollow, followed by lips, so soft, lapping, licking, along the muscle, feeling her breathing deepen beneath his mouth, until he caught the lobe of her ear between his lips, mouthed it, then up, a dip of his tongue into her ear. Sansa gasped suddenly and Theon smiled. He knew this didn’t work for every woman, but obviously Sansa was one of the ones it did. He continued the delicate strokes of his tongue until he felt Sansa sigh and her body relax further.

Leaving off his task, he kissed her mouth again. “I want to unlace your shift, Sansa,” he said. “At the front. Lower your shoulder straps. I want to see your beautiful breasts and kiss them. Lick your nipples until they’re rosy and hard against my tongue.”

A sudden flush across her cheeks and rising from the neck of her shift, but not shame, not from the look in her eyes, but desire. She nodded, her eyes locked on his and he didn’t look away, as he undid the laces at the front of her shift, loosening it, until he could lower first one strap then the other, releasing her breasts. He looked then, taking the time to appreciate Sansa’s beauty, and the trust she placed in him. He nearly winced for a moment, noticing suddenly the old scars of bite marks, knowing whose they would be, but he managed to school his face into showing nothing but pleasure. Back to her collarbone, his tongue again, soft trace of his lips this time down the muscle leading down, swooping under the curve of her right breast first, then up again until he felt the shape of her nipple beneath his mouth. Carefully he used his tongue to taste it, licking inwards and using his lips to capture it, pressing the nipple between his lips and his tongue until he felt it engorge and rise, harden beneath his lips. Taking his mouth away, he placed a gentle hand on it, softly keeping pressure on it as he repeated his effort on Sansa’s left breasts until both of her nipples stood hard and proud beneath his ministrations.

He looked up at her then, and her eyes were dark with desire, matching his. He didn’t know if he desired sex, but he desired Sansa and that was more than enough. “I’d like you to stand up,” he said. “I want to take off your shift, and then sit you back on the bed and I want to kiss the line of your stomach down to the crease of your hip.”

She didn’t nod this time, but stood, its own permission. Carefully he unlaced the last of her shift until it dropped down to the floor, leaving her naked and splendid before him. “Sansa,” he breathed, and was pleased to watch her smile, suddenly proud of the effect she had on him.

He caught her hand and guided her to sit on the edge of the bed, Placed her hands beside her, so she was leaning back, exposing the length of her torso to him. He knelt at her feet, and leaned forward, capturing her nipple with his tongue again, first one the the other, licking them and then breathing across them, watching as they puckered and rose again under the cooling effect. Then he followed the line of her stomach downwards, lips tracing the shape of her abdomen. Beneath her ribs he got the reaction he wanted, the sudden drawing in of her breath as his mouth found the sensitive spot where she would be ticklish if that’s what he was doing. He followed down to her hip and then down the other side, gaining the same reaction.

“I’m going to spread your legs, Sansa,” he said and at her nod, he pressed his hands between her knees and opened her to him. Her red curls peeked at him and he felt the sudden tremble in her leg as a small tremor of fear ran through her. He turned his head, kissed the inside of her knee softly. “I’m going to kiss your thigh,” he said. “From your knee to your hip,” he said. She closed her eyes for a second and then nodded and he slowly, softly began to draw a line of kisses up the inside of her thigh. Her muscles were tense, at first, beneath his mouth, but as his kisses stayed soft and gentle, the tension left them and Sansa sighed again. He reached the point where her leg creased into her body and stopped, returned to her other knee, repeated the trail of kisses.

“I would like to touch your cunt,” he said and then cursed as she suddenly froze and he knew that was a Ramsay word (and he could imagine how Ramsay had used it). Theon panicked for a moment, racking his brain. Cunny was too close and fuck, he’d read every dirty book he’d been able to get his hands on and fuck, fuck, fuck, why couldn’t he remember another word? Then he managed to dredge an old word from his memory, a word from the south and rarely used now, “Your quim,” he said softly, and the worst of the tension left Sansa’s muscles. “I’m going to touch it. Just my fingers and gently. You can stop me anytime you want me to.” She nodded then, although she did not open her eyes.

Gently, so gently, just the lightest touch of fingertips, he brushed them through her red curls, touched her entrance and was not at all surprised to find it dry. He knew this, from his own experience, when no matter the stimulus, the fear was so great that your body couldn’t react to desire any more, no matter how much you wanted to.

“I’m going to step away for a second, Sansa,” he said. “I have oil. Dornish oil. The…” (he couldn’t use the word, another Ramsay word he was sure), “ladies of Winter Town use it. It helps, when your body isn’t ready.”

Sansa’s eyes suddenly opened. “You… planned for this?” she said, and it wasn’t frightened but a sudden, soft laugh.

Theon gave her a look. “I thought… maybe something would happen. And if it did, I didn’t want to be ransacking the kitchen at this time of the night. And I wasn’t using lamp oil - that stuff tastes like shit.”

“Tastes like shit?” said Sansa with a grin.

“Robb dared me to drink some,” said Theon. “Back in the day.”

“Of course he did,” Sansa said, rolling her eyes. “And of course you drank it.”

“Of course I did,” replied Theon. “And it’s fucking disgusting, Sans. I’m not tasting that again. Or putting it on you.”

“Tasting that…” said Sansa, suddenly grasping what he said.

“I want to taste you, Sansa,” said Theon, serious again. “I want to moisten you with Dornish oil, and then I want to find your pearl with my tongue and I want to _taste you._ ” The last words thrummed with intent.

Sansa nodded and Theon went to his chest of drawers, drew out the bottle of oil he’d managed to purchase discreetly on his last visit to Winter Town and knelt back between her open legs. He dripped oil on his fingers and then gently touched her curls again, her entrance, moistening her. Then he lowered his mouth to her curls, and using his tongue, spread the oil until he released Sansa’s pearl from its hood. His first lick was long and light and he smiled as he heard Sansa gasp. He lifted his head away for a second and said, “Lie down, Sansa,” and then returned to his task.

He varied his tempo, the weight of his tongue on her pearl, at each stroke, listening to Sansa’s breathing to try and work out which one worked best for her. Slowly he worked it out, that’s she liked him to be slow but hard, deep strokes and as he kept to his task, her breathing began to grow ragged. He grinned suddenly, and stopped his mouth over her and flicked his tongue suddenly, making the tip of her pearl, unhooded, tap against the back of his teeth.

“Theon,” squealed Sansa, her legs spasming suddenly in delight and her hands clutched at his hair. “Fucking gods, Theon!”

It was too much to do often, too much of a delightful shock, but he interspersed it between the slow heavy strokes of his tongue, occasionally dipping his tongue down to taste her entrance. It took several times, but when he realised that between the oil and the taste of his own mouth, he could taste Sansa, taste her wetness and her honey, he couldn’t help the smirk that he buried in her curls. When he’d got control over that, he raised his head up, and said, “I’m going to slide a finger inside you, Sansa,” he said.

The smirk returned when she responded, her voice thick with desire, “Fuck, _yes_ , Theon.” Slowly, carefully, ensuring she was ready, desire wetting her and loosening her, he slid a finger inside her warmth. Her breathing grew ragged again, and her fingers suddenly clutched in his hair.

His tongue returned to her pearl and he let his finger slide in and out of her, feeling her hips begin to rock beneath him until she found her rhythm, thrusting against his hand. She grew wetter and slicker beneath his hand and he slid a second finger into her, curling them up until they pressed against her inner walls, seeking her inner pearl as well.

Theon had excellent concentration. It was the reason he was such a good archer; the ability to set aside everything and concentrate on a target. But he had never concentrated in his life the way he did now, on the feel of Sansa’s quim beneath his fingers, the taste of her pearl, the way her fingers clutched and spasmed in his hair. “Oh fucking gods,” she murmured, over and over again. “Gods, gods, gods, fucking gods,” a rising gasp and he concentrated and his fingers curled just so and his tongue stroked just so, and, “Theon!” she screamed. “Oh fuck, Theon!” And he felt the walls of her quim suddenly clutch at him, her fingers grip in his hair as her legs shuddered around his head, the rest of her body still like a bell that had been struck and was about to peal. “Oh oh oh,” she said as she fell hectically down the other side of her peak, her body completely still except for the last shudders of her walls around his fingers. When she was finally spent, he withdrew his fingers from her, wiped his mouth on the sheets, and crawled up the bed till her lay beside her, propped up on his elbows, smiling down at her flushed and sated face.

“Did that please you?” he asked, knowing he was being somewhat facetious.

“Fucking gods, Theon,” responded Sansa vehemently and he couldn’t help but laugh at Sansa, who never swore, because ladies didn’t, suddenly discovering at least one of the times that swearing was necessary. “Why did no one ever tell me it was like that?”

Theon shrugged. “Good manners?” he suggested.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him and he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at the satisfaction she radiated. It lessened slightly as she looked at him and she said, “I wish I could please you in return.”

The smile he gave her was soaring with joy. “You don’t need to please me,” he said. “Gods, Sansa, if I had the strength left to do it, I’d dress up in shining armour and get on a white horse and gallop a lap of victory around the tourney field. You can’t begin to imagine how much you pleased me.” His head dropped back and he was suddenly laughing. “You moaned to the gods and screamed my name and… and… you can’t begin to imagine what you’ve given back to me.”

“I’m glad,” she said softly, and then reached out to him and curled within his arms for a moment, until she made yet another new discovery. “Um,” she said shifting her weight. “Are the sheets supposed to be that wet?”

Theon laughed again. “Go to the privy, Sansa,” he said. “Dry yourself off. I’ll sort out the bed. This is all perfectly normal.”

He did sort out the bed, mostly by rearranging the pillows and furs so they could sleep away from the damp and oily patch they’d made. That could wait until the actual morning.

For now, he curled himself around Sansa again and quickly fell into a satisfied sleep. Sansa took longer to sleep, but by the time she did, she had the outlines of a plan in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, thank goodness for public holidays, so I could spend three days writing hot Theon/Sansa smut. Now I need a cold shower...
> 
> (Also, you’re all wonderful with your comments and kudos and I will reply to them all in time, but my brain is currently on fire with this fic and I figure getting it written down when it wants to be written so badly is the priority.)


	7. The Gift Of Knowledge (Including Detailed Diagrams And Helpful Footnotes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She loved to watch Theon.
> 
> (Aka The smut continues.)

The Gift Of Knowledge (Including Detailed Diagrams And Helpful Footnotes) 

 

_Valar morghulis, Torgo Nudho_

_I have been told that this is your name in your own language, the name you have chosen as your own as you have also chosen the way of honour._

_I write to you not as General Grey Worm, but as Torgo Nudho, the man who has chosen to claim his own name, the slave who is now free, the Unsullied who has chosen to love a woman._

_What I write now is as a personal request, and is not related to the war. If you feel that you must share it with others, then I ask now on your honour as an Unsullied that you read no further and burn this letter immediately._

_If you choose to read on, then I request your assistance._

_I love a man who was held as a slave by a torturer. His name was taken from him. He was unmanned. All was taken from him._

_I fell into the hands of this torturer, this man who would have enslaved the world, and despite everything that was taken from him, the man I love saved me. And then saved all of us from the Night King, in a last stand in the Godswood. He had no need to join that fight and yet he chose to, for he is a man of great honour and courage._

_The man I love was sore wounded in that battle and has remained with me in the north. In that time, it has become clear that he loves me also._

_I thought that the torturer had stripped all the pleasures of being a woman from me. The man I love has shown me that I can still be pleased as a woman._

_Yet I do not know how to please him._

_I do not know if it is even possible to please a man who has been made as the Unsullied. Yet I know that you are Unsullied and that you have chosen to love a woman and are loved in return. This brings me hope._

_I wish to take this man as my husband. I want to please him as a wife does her husband. As he pleases me as a husband does his wife._

_Thus I humbly seek your advice as to whether you know of a way that I can please the man I love._

_I write this to you not as the Lady of Winterfell but as_

_Sansa Stark_

***

She loved to watch Theon.

She loved to watch the serious look on his face when she sought his counsel and he gave due consideration to all the information she brought him. She loved to watch him at archery practice, his skill as great as ever, or when he practiced forms with the younger men still left behind, becoming their de facto master at arms. She loved to watch the way he was slowly relaxing with the folk of Winterfell, becoming less wary and less inclined to think they remembered only his abortive seizure of the keep and that, perhaps, their acceptance of him was not just murderous rage politely concealed in deference to their Lady.

But most of all, she loved to prop herself up on pillows and watch him as he would kiss and stroke his way down the length of her body until his mouth would find her pearl. He would look up at her as his tongue delved into her wetness and her heat, and his blue-green eyes would worship her and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be a goddess, golden bubbles running through your veins, until she fell apart beneath him once again.

And when it was done and she had caught her breath and he was lying beside her again, she would kiss him and taste herself on his tongue and then drift her hand and mouth down the length of him, kissing along muscle and over scars, enjoying the slight salt taste of his skin beneath her mouth. They weren’t like his kisses, intent and purposeful, but she wanted him to know that she adored him as ardently as he adored her. And so she kissed him wherever she could touch, over scars and unmarked skin alike, trying to burn into him how much they didn’t matter to her, how much they were just another part of him and that she loved all of him.

She had never asked him to take his sleeping trews off. One night, though, as she drew soft kisses across his stomach, he had stopped her, a gentle cupping of her chin and drawing her back up to him to kiss her mouth softly. Then he had gently settled her beside him and, face averted, Theon had unlaced his trews and drew them off.

She would never tell Theon, but it was actually much better than Sansa had imagined. Knowing Ramsay, she had pictured devastation, deep carved wounds and dreadful scars. Instead, what had been left was almost neat; a short stub of an inch or so, a scar beneath that, all within a nest of red-gold curls. She realised it actually made more sense than what she’d feared. The fact that Winterfell took in so many of the wounded from the war in the south had made her rather more expert in wounds than she had ever planned. Deep groin wounds were, she knew, always fatal; even if the men survived long enough to make it to Winterfell, they had wound rot that killed them within a short time of their arrival. Ramsay who, Sansa thought bitterly, could have trained the Maesters in what men could endure and survive, had never intended to let Theon die from that wound.

She was, if anything, more horrified by the twin braided scars that laced down the length of Theon’s inner thighs. Ramsay had clearly flayed matching strips from there and Sansa winced at even the thought of that. Softly, carefully, she ran her fingers down the length of Theon’s thigh, the lightest drift of fingers, followed by the touch of her mouth, soft kisses that she wished could heal all of the hurts that Theon was forced to wear.

That had been a few weeks ago now. Sansa had been careful to respect Theon’s obvious initial discomfort of drawing any attention to where he had been cut. But as time went by and particularly as she had discovered how much she loved the feeling of intertwining her long bare legs with his as they kissed, the soft silken feel of skin against skin, he had grown more comfortable and she had grown more bold. At some point, she’d discovered the joy of stroking her hands across the hard muscles and silken-soft skin of his buttocks (unlike her own, strangely unmarked by scars; her fleeting bitter thought was to wonder whether Ramsay had thought it unimaginative when it came to Theon). The first time she had drawn his centre close to hers when they were kissing, he had flinched back and she had let him go immediately . But now, now he let her draw him to her, centre against centre, letting her wetness rub briefly against his groin and what was still left to him.

But it had been without purpose, other than that of drowning in his kisses and his love. Sansa wanted to please Theon but she had no idea how to even try.

Until now.

“Theon,” said Sansa, leaving off kissing his chest. “May I…try something?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Something?” He questioned.

She looked at him and then turned her face away, a flush rising up her neck and over her cheeks, until she was bright pink.

Theon laughed softly. “Still the lady?” he said and she nodded shyly. It amused him, how Sansa still couldn’t find it in herself to actually say anything about what she wanted, even as her hands and mouth grew increasingly bold.

“I…” she began and stopped. “Do you trust me?” she asked, glancing back at him, one eyebrow raised in query.

“Utterly,” he responded, seriously. If she had asked him to walk into fire or off the walls of Winterfell again, he would have done so without question.

“I want to try something,” she repeated. “It may not do what I hope, but… you will have to trust me. Unless, if you want me to stop, just ask, you know, I’ll always stop.” Sansa’s tongue tangled over her words and she cursed her childhood fancies that had left her so inarticulate when negotiating the intricacies of pleasure.

“Sansa, I trust you,” Theon said. “If it would please you to try something, then I want to let you try it.”

She nodded, accepting what he offered her. At first, taking time to gain courage, she went back to what she had been doing, soft kisses on his chest, but after a few moments, the kisses became harder, more intent, no longer drifting but a trail purposely made down the side of his rib cage and along the long indentation of his stomach below it. Then inwards, along the muscle that ran over his hips and towards his groin, and Sansa found herself making the smallest of groaning noises, deep in her throat, as she did. There was purpose to what she was doing, intent, and she suddenly felt a rush of moisture and heat in her quim, as her body _wanted_.

Then her nose was buried in red-gold curls and, gathering her courage, she continued onwards, until her cheek brushed against Theon’s stub. She felt him flinch minutely and then still again as she ran her tongue through his curls and then under the edge of his stub, the same swirling, gentle motion he used on her pearl.

“Oh,” she heard Theon sigh, and then, “ _Oh!_ ” as she continued to lave him with her tongue. She had hoped that enough of him remained that she could wake sensation in him and as his hand suddenly clutched at the sheet, she knew that she had been successful. She wondered if he’d even thought to try and somehow knew he hadn’t - the wound in his mind had been as bad, if not worse, than the physical injury.

Then Sansa moved her body, slotting herself between Theon’s legs carefully. She reached up with her hand, touching just under Theon’s scar and moving it back slightly to the smooth soft, unscarred skin between his legs. Slowly and softly she began to stroke the skin and then increased the pressure carefully, cocking her wrist and increasing the hardness of her strokes as she did so, enjoying the feeling both of being in control and seeking to please. She smiled triumphantly as she heard Theon groan and then suddenly bend his knees so his legs opened wider and gave her better access.

“Seven fucking hells, Sansa,” he said, “that’s… I just… _Oh!_ ” He trailed off again, but she could feel him shift his weight slightly and grab pillows to prop himself up more comfortably. Sansa didn’t know if Theon had ever done anything like this before - it’s not like she could ever bring herself to _ask_ … - but she silently blessed the old gods and the new that Theon had once been a confident (and by the boasting she’d overheard him making to Robb before she was old enough to really understand it, inventive) lover and didn’t treat her as if she was doing something shocking.

Which gave her the boldness to raise her eyes to his, not stopping the motion of her hand. “I need… just give me a moment and I’ll be back,” she said and quickly slid off the bed. She returned a few seconds later, the (lately somewhat neglected) bottle of Dornish oil in her hand. She raised an eyebrow in question, expecting some kind of protest, but was relieved (and frankly, aroused) when instead he’d grinned in response and sliding down the pillows slightly, opened his legs even wider for her.

“Theon Greyjoy,” she purred in delight and settled herself back between his legs. Opening the bottle of oil, she dripped it liberally along the skin below his scar and then doused her fingers in it, thankful she’d paid so much rapt attention to what Theon had done for her. Then she slid her hand down again, rocking it hard against his skin, until he gasped again, his head dropping back and a flush beginning to spread across his chest.

Taking a deep breath, Sansa reached down further then, her fingers sliding down and touching on the puckered edge of Theon’s hole, dancing lightly around the rim of it and rubbing the oil in liberally. For an uncomfortable second, she remembered the pain she had felt when Ramsay had forced his way into her that way, but she knew this was going to be nothing like that. This was wanted and desired and slippery warm and she was going to be gentle and careful and take all the time that was needed for Theon to be comfortable, and that lasted for exactly as long as it took for Theon to groan and say, “fuck, Sansa, put your fingers in me now, hard, now,” and then “ _fuuuuuuck”_ as she slid a long slender finger deep into him, and then “more, Sansa,” and she slid a second finger in and felt, felt against the smooth walls of him and then felt it pressed against the pads of her fingers, like a walnut below the skin and she curled her fingers and pressed and Theon made a strangled groan of purest pleasure.

Then she couldn’t wait any more and she slid her other hand down between her legs, balled her fist so she could rub against it, even as she curled and pressed with her fingers at Theon’s request “there, more, harder, harder, oh fuck, oh gods, oh yes, Sansa, fuck, harder, harder” and she used his instructions to drive the tempo of the thrusts of her pearl against the hard edge of her hand and with the little remaining thought she had she moved her mouth to his stub again and licked and danced her tongue there and Theon said “harder” and “faster” and “more” and she complied and then his voice soared for a second, “ _fuuuuuck_ ” and his body stilled and the smallest amount of liquid spilled across her tongue and she swallowed it down, even as she rubbed harder again against her fist and fell apart, splayed upon her own fingers.

She wasn’t sure how long it took them to rebuild themselves enough to speak, but it may have been a small eternity.

“Did you just… please yourself?” Theon asked, not at all the question Sansa was expecting. She made an inarticulate noise of agreement, and Theon continued. “Have you ever done that before, Sans?” he asked fondly and smiled when she shook her head. “Whatever happened to that prim and perfect lady you were going to be?”

“Theon Greyjoy happened,” replied Sansa and a smile spread across her face as she looked up at him, from where her cheek rested on his thigh. “Theon Greyjoy with his smiling mouth and those talented fingers and, Theon, oh Theon, I _pleased you_.” And she was laughing suddenly as Theon had done all those weeks ago when first he had pleased her and she understood why now, the sheer delight of pleasing the one you loved.

“It really happened?” he asked her. “I… I’m almost frightened that it was a dream. I didn’t think… I didn’t even think that it was possible. That I could feel that again.”

“It worked,” said Sansa, aware that she was almost babbling with happiness. “It worked, oh gods, I’m so happy it worked.” She laughed again. “Thank the gods that you can please an Unsullied.”

Theon looked down at his love and his face was suddenly very puzzled. “Wait, what, Sans?” he asked. “I feel like I’ve missed a few steps in this conversation.”

Sansa sat up, sat cross-legged between Theon’s thighs. “You remember all those books you used to sneak out of the secret library behind Maester Luwin’s back?” she asked. “I read all of them - all the ones I could find - and none of them told me anything useful. Though I can see why you kept stealing that one called The Happy Harlot,” she added, blushing slightly.

“And…?” prompted Theon, refusing to be distracted.

Sansa took a deep breath. “So I wrote to General Grey Worm and asked if there was any way that I could please one who was like the Unsullied. I knew he loved Missandei and he was the only person I could think who could help me. Well, help me and not tell the whole world I had asked. His reply arrived this morning.”

Theon looked at her through narrowed eyes. “That’s why you’ve been making sure you get to the courier before me each morning,” he said. “And why you disappeared into your study this morning after he arrived.”

“Well, yes,” replied Sansa. “I would think that was obvious.”

“I’m catching up, Sansa,” replied Theon. “Give me a chance to run through some emotional steps here.” But even though he managed to inject a note of annoyance into his voice, he couldn’t stop the edges of his mouth curling up in a smile.

“Do you want to read the letter?” replied Sansa, and at his nod, she went to his chest of drawers and dug it out from where she had hidden it beneath his small clothes.

“It’s long,” said Theon as she handed him the sheaf of papers. He flipped through it quickly and his eyes widened. “It has diagrams. _Detailed_ diagrams.”

“Grey Worm was very… thorough,” replied Sansa.

Theon looked at one of the diagrams and said, “I’m fairly certain I can find someone that could craft that for us,” he said, his eyes widening slightly. “I… spent a lot of time in Winter Town. I know people.”

Sansa shrugged. “I spent a lot of time under the _protection_ ,” her scorn was clear in that word, “of Littlefinger. I know a lot of people that could craft that for us. And the other things. There’s a - a potion. That the Unsullied take. Not the one that dulls the pain, but another, one that helps them stay - Unsullied. Not like Varys, who - softens. Grey Worm’s already organised to send a supply.”

Theon decided to put that bit of information aside for another time as he continued to puzzle over the letter. “Sansa, there are footnotes. Helpful footnotes. The writing’s the same but they’ve got “M” next to them.”

“Grey Worm couldn’t write the letter. I don’t even know if he’s literate in Valyrian. Missandei obviously wrote it on his behalf. But she wrote the footnotes for me. A woman’s view.”

“They’re very… helpful.” Theon’s voice was slightly strangled. Missandei was not at all shy in her footnotes - some of the details nearly made him blush.

“Indeed,” replied Sansa and the smile she bestowed on Theon was thoroughly lascivious.

Theon continued to read and stopped suddenly, looking at the last page, the last footnote. “Sans,” he whispered.

“Theon?”

He read it out. “It is a great honour to love an Unsullied, Lady Stark, and an even greater honour to be loved by one in return. I wish you well in your marriage to this man.” He looked up at her. “Sansa,” he said again.

“Yes, Theon,” she responded calmly. “Yes.”

And that was how Sansa proposed to Theon the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, er, yes. Possibly more cold showers needed. 
> 
> I have also realised that yes, Theon isn’t actually that broken about some things. Very traumatised about some issues but when he realises he’s safe and loved and can get some, sexy boy who goes after what he wants came roaring back.
> 
> Also, yes, I have invented testosterone replacement therapy for the Unsullied. I’ve got a background in biology and genetics and the Unsullied, as written/shown, make no biological sense. If they don’t have some source of testosterone, they simply wouldn’t develop as shown. So in a world of blood and body magic, I’ve invented some of my own, because the biology was making my brain hurt.
> 
> And I’m sure you can all work out where the next chapter is heading.


	8. A Gift Born Of Persistence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He froze like the sea when the ships sailed to the farthest north, when the water at the top congealed into ice and then froze down into the depths and no ships could pass.

A Gift Born Of Persistence

Sansa Stark proposed to Theon Greyjoy and he felt his world end.

He should have expected it, but it had still fallen like a hammer blow. Happiness, he thought it had been happiness, rediscovering pleasure, what Sansa had done to bring him that gift, everything that had been there for those few moments. 

He froze like the sea when the ships sailed to the farthest north, when the water at the top congealed into ice and then froze down into the depths and no ships could pass.

“You can’t,” he said, softly, helplessly, his lips suddenly numb. “You can’t do that to yourself, Sansa. Not me. You can’t.”

“Theon,” Sansa replied patiently. “Theon, I want you to be my husband. I know what I’m asking. I know there’ll be questions. But I don’t care. It’s you that I love and you that I want to marry.”

“Theon Turncloak, you would marry Theon Turncloak,” said Theon softly, and suddenly he was shivering. “Marry  _ Reek _ . I did terrible things, Sansa. I can’t ever make amends.”

“You did terrible things, Theon,” agreed Sansa. She reached for one of the furs, wrapped it around Theon’s shivering frame. “As did I. Different things, but terrible nonetheless. You were always clever, Theon, but you weren’t wise. And I wasn’t clever, but I was diligent and studied hard when it was things I needed to know, but I didn’t always get it right. We were slow learners, but we learned. We learned and maybe now we are a little bit wise.” 

He dragged his eyes up from where they had locked on the pages in his hand, blind now to what was on them. He looked at her, half-terrified, half-frozen. “Wise?” he managed.

“Would you do those things, again, Theon?” Sansa asked. “Those terrible things?”

He shook his head, mutely, passionately. 

“We learn,” she repeated. “Our lessons were hard, but we learned, Theon. You aren’t that clever, unwise boy any more, looking for where you belong. You belong here, by my side, as my husband.”

Mutely, again, he shook his head, his eyes full of anguish.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he responded, his voice hoarse. “More than anything.” 

“What did you think this was, Theon?” asked Sansa. “To let me into your bed, to learn to please each other again? To sleep by my side, be my counsellor, what did you think this was? Other than love. Love I want for the rest of my days.”

He looked back at his hands again, put aside the pages, twisted his hands in the sheets. “A dream,” he replied. “An idyll. For as long as I could have you. But the world - the world will laugh at you, Sansa. Wanting to marry Theon Turncloak. You deserve - no-one should laugh at you.  _ Ever _ ,” he added fiercely. “No-one should shame you for your choice in husband. The war will end, the world will come back to Winterfell and I will go back to the Iron Islands and you can marry someone… better. Someone good.”

“There is no-one else for me,” replied Sansa. “This is not a dream. This is all that I want in the world, right here, right now, in this room. Oh  _ Theon _ ,” she said, and his name was almost a sob. “I wish this could be easy. I wish that you saw yourself as I see you.” She reached out gently, curled a lock of his hair between her fingers. “You’re a good man, Theon. A brave man. You’ve learned to be kind and you’ve learned to be wise and there’s nothing more I want in all the world to have you as my husband. I know it will take time but I will keep asking, as many times as it takes until you can say yes.” Her hand drifted down from his hair, skimmed lightly over his cheek until she raised his chin and could look into his eyes. “You’re allowed to be happy, Theon.”

But he did not believe her.

***

He thought of running, taking the fastest ship he could find and going back to the Iron Islands. 

He thought of closing his door to Sansa and not letting her back in when he heard her footsteps in the night.

He did neither and he wasn’t sure if it was cowardice or courage. 

Instead he held on to her like he was drowning and she was the only thing he could cling to. Sansa came to his door each night and he let her in and slowly the terror receded and the frozen sea inside his mind began to thaw. He was greedy, and the world hadn’t come to their door yet, and he would have Sansa for as long as he could.

And then she asked him to marry her again and everything inside him splintered into pieces.

No, he said. No. You are the Lady of Winterfell. There are alliances to be made. Marriages are power. I am nothing. An alliance of no value. Without power.

Make me a list, she said. A list of every Lord from every holding who would be an alliance of greater value than you. And then show me on that list who would love me more than you do. Who would let me rule as Lady Stark and not seek to usurp my power. Who would be my counsellor and seek nothing more. Who would not seek to take away my name. Who would marry me for love. Because you’ll find there will be none.

He did not make a list, because she was right, as she always was.

***

He told her that the people of Winterfell would not accept him, that he had spoiled everything of the keep and the people and that she could not ask it of her smallfolk. 

So instead of watching him from the walls, she came down when he was teaching the young men their forms and asked them what they thought of Lord Theon’s training. He had to listen as they praised both his skills and how kindly and thoughtfully he taught them the arts of war and, more importantly, the art of making peace.

When that was not enough, she would talk to the kitchen staff and the maids when he could hear them and they would tell her how kind he was, how courteous, and he could not avoid hearing it. She raised her eyebrows and asked if she needed to ask the maesters and he acquiesced that perhaps she had a point.

But still he said no.

***

They were alone in the audience chamber, late in the evening, when the day’s business had been done when she asked again.

“You wanted a family,” said Theon. “Children. I wish…” he trailed off. He hadn’t known how much he had wanted children until the possibility had been taken from him. “But I can’t. I cannot be the father of your children, Sansa. You are Lady Stark of Winterfell and you deserve the family you wanted. Winterfell needs the Starks.”

“Do you remember that list you didn’t make,” she said to Theon, “of the Lords who would be better prospects of marriage for me? How many of those do you think would let me raise my child as a Stark? How many wouldn’t try and take away my family name and make Winterfell their own?” For the first time when he said no to her again, Sansa looked away from him. When she looked back, her skin was porcelain white, except for two high hectic spots of colour on her cheeks. “Do I have to remind you of the name of the last man who considered me a broodmare?”

He tried to apologise then, stumbling over his words, but she held up her hand, stopping him. “I need… some time,” she said, picking her words out carefully. “I think it would be best if you found… somewhere else to be for a few days.”

Once, long ago, he would have stayed, argued his point, tried to persuade Sansa. 

But deference had been flayed into him and he fell back upon those survival habits now and the safety they offered him.

Without a further word, he nodded at Sansa and withdrew.

***

He didn’t leave his room for the three days it took for her to come back to him. The cook was informed of his absence from table and food and water was delivered to his chambers and he ate at least some of it. 

He was waiting, silently, sitting in the chair that faced the door when finally she knocked again. He rose at the knock, made a noise that she took as invitation to come into the room. 

Sansa closed the door quietly behind her, stood with her back against it as she looked at him, standing wordless beside his chair, his eyes wild, his body utterly still.

“I’m not angry at you, Theon,” she said.

His bones turned to water inside him and he slumped suddenly, barely catching the back of the chair with his hand and holding himself up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbled and Sansa knew that tone, she  _ knew  _ it, hated it, remembered it from when he had been Reek and she was suddenly in front of him, guiding him so he could sit again, cradling his face in her hands. 

“Theon,” she said, then louder, over the top of his desperate soft apologies. “You’re Theon, Theon, you’re Theon Greyjoy,” And she kept repeating his name until finally he looked up at her and he was there again, Theon again, the shadow of Reek slipping away from him.

“I’m not angry at you, Theon,” Sansa repeated. “I was never angry at you. I was angry at the world, at what was done to us. At the choices we don’t have any more. I was angry that this is what I have to feel because of Ramsay. I was angry at everything but you. I sent you away because I didn’t want you to think that I was angry at you.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “Yara’s always angry at me,” and rubbed his forehead lightly, a gesture Sansa didn’t understand. “But she’s angry right here, right now. I know why she’s angry and then she’s not angry anymore.”

“And that’s better?” asked Sansa.

“That’s better,” replied Theon, and he actually managed a small smile for Sansa, the first she had seen in what felt like a long time. “I spent… a long time having to care every second of every day if Ramsay was angry at me, or if he could find an excuse to be angry at me if he felt like it. Or if I’d just be put back on the cross because he was bored today. And it all got mixed up inside my head, because I care so much about you and I cared about whether you were angry at me, and I didn’t know, and all of…  _ that…  _ tried to come back.” 

“Oh, Theon,” said Sansa and she turned and sat at his feet, her head leaning against his knee. “I’ll remember that. I always remember the things you tell me. I’ll always try and do right by you. For the rest of our lives.”

His hand, which had started to stroke her hair, stilled suddenly and she turned her face and looked up at him.

“It’s not about all the excuses, is it?” she asked him. “Not about the world and what it would think of us if we were married. Tell me, Theon,” reaching up her hand and intertwining it with his, “what was the last thing you wanted for yourself? That you tried to get for yourself?”

He looked down at her, slightly puzzled. “To come to Winterfell and fight for you,” he replied. She frowned and he corrected himself. “No,” he said. “I fought Harrag. To save Yara.”

“Not to save us. Not to save Yara,” replied Sansa. “What was the last thing you wanted for  _ you _ .”

He barely remembered what that felt like, wanting something for himself. Trying to gain something for himself. He had loved Sansa with all of his being long before she had asked him to kiss her in the Godswood, and he knew that he would never have taken a single step down that path without her leading him. Passive acceptance had been carved into his flesh, piece by bleeding piece, and he barely knew what it was to want something for himself anymore.

But he tried for her and his mouth quirked downwards as he remembered the last things he had wanted for himself, that he had asked for. “Freedom,” he said, softly. “Escape. The end of pain. Mercy,” and mercy had been denied him, along with all the others, until there was only one thing left to want. “Death.”

“Oh my love, my love,” said Sansa. “Nothing since then.”

He thought and shook his head. He had made it back to Pyke and Yara and she’d barely had time to find him armour that fit and cut his hair before the Kingsmoot. And then Euron had taken the Salt Throne and they’d been on the move ever since and Theon had had no time to think of wanting anything other than a safe place to sleep, and to survive until morning, and to save Yara.

“We aren’t there anymore,” said Sansa, her grip on his hand tightening. “You’re allowed to want things for yourself. To ask for them.” She reached up with her other hand and lightly stroked his cheek. “You’re allowed to be happy, Theon. Do you think you can try for me?”

He remembered then, Yara asking him almost the same question in Volantis, when he wasn’t Theon Greyjoy, but just the flotsam left behind by the shipwreck Ramsay had made of his life. And he had looked deep inside and found enough courage to start again, to rebuild Theon Greyjoy from the wreckage. For Yara’s sake. Because Yara needed him.

But not all of him. Some parts would never sail straight again and some parts - some parts were still wreckage. He had not needed them since then and had never even tried to rebuild them.

The part that wanted things - Ramsay had broken that piece thoroughly, smashed it endlessly into pain and suffering and watching other people die in agony because it made it even worse. Wanting something, anything, even death, was a weakness Ramsay could exploit, could turn into something worse and worse and worse again, so even when you got what you wanted, somehow it became another way to feel pain. Theon had learned to want nothing for himself, to shun even the thought of seeking out his own happiness, because to want anything was to open a path to suffering.

How could he tell Sansa that he said no to her, because saying yes would mean having to see her flayed body hanging from the gibbet?

Except…

Except…

Ramsay Bolton was dead. House Bolton was dead. The Dreadfort was empty and the gibbet torn down.

He could stay as he was, a shipwreck on his frozen sea, safe and distant and unmoving, stranded far from his own life.

Or he could make another choice: to break out of his passivity, to take steps to stand in front of the world and say, I want this, I choose this, this is mine. Not for Sansa’s sake, but for his own.

He looked into Sansa’s eyes, a moment repeating in his life, and found the courage all over again. 

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes.”

She didn’t take her eyes from his, nor let go his hand. “Then will you marry me, Theon Greyjoy?”

He gave her the only answer that he could. “I would say yes to you, Sansa Stark. I would choose to marry you.”

Despite her own pronouncements on the matter, Sansa really was a clever girl and she raised an eyebrow at him. “But?” she asked.

“But you are not my Queen,” replied Theon.

“Ah,” replied Sansa, “Yara.”

“I require my Queen’s permission to marry,” replied Theon.

“Then we'd best go find a raven,” said Sansa.

“Not yet,” said Theon and pulled Sansa up off the floor and kissed her until he thought his breath would run out. “I want you,” he said when he broke off the kiss at last, trying out the words, trying out the feeling of wanting something for himself in his head. “I want you in my bed, and naked, and laughing, Sansa. Because I need some practice in this happiness thing, and I think that would be an excellent place to start.”

Sansa, because she had learned wisdom, agreed. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this thing is a bit of a roller coaster to write. I expected the smutty bits to be all rather traumatic, but no. Then this was going to be a bit of light fluff and both of them decided to let me know they were, in fact, going to be very traumatised by what was going on here, thanks very much. So that was a thing. 
> 
> I will note that there are plans to properly explore Sansa's issues with being considered a broodmare (she has very strong feelings about this), but it was too much to deal with in this chapter.


	9. A Gift From The Iron Islands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wondered if he could teach Sansa how to sail, if she would come with him to the sea sometimes and feel the dance of the waves beneath her feet and laugh into the salt foam that flew off the top of the waves, where the seabirds fluttered.
> 
> He wanted her. He wanted a future with her, and it made him smile into the cold salt wind and urge the ship on towards the Iron Islands and Yara’s answer.

A Gift From The Iron Islands 

 

_Will you agree that I’ve got my head out of my fucking arse if I ask your permission to marry Sansa?_

_Theon_

***

_Get to the shore near Deepwood Motte. I’m sending my fastest ship to collect you._

_You don’t get to do this by raven, little brother_

_Yara_

***

Theon loved the sea. Loved the changing colour of it, the moods of it, how it let you sleep quietly upon its breast and then spent the day trying to dash you to its depths. He felt alive upon the sea in a way that he didn’t feel on land. Not better, just different, and he breathed in the salt air and tasted it on his tongue and wondered if he could teach Sansa how to sail, if she would come with him to the sea sometimes and feel the dance of the waves beneath her feet and laugh into the salt foam that flew off the top of the waves, where the seabirds fluttered.

He wanted her. He wanted a future with her, and it made him smile into the cold salt wind and urge the ship on towards the Iron Islands and Yara’s answer.

***

Yara met him on the docks, drawing him to her for an embrace. “You didn’t die,” she greeted him. “Well fucking done.”

“Love you too, Yara,” he responded with a grin into her shoulder.

“Come ride with me,” she said and beckoned forward the Ironborn who held two horses at the end of the dock.

They rode out of Pyke, speaking of inconsequential things - the weather, repairs to Pyke and the bridges between towers, minor gossip about what was happening in Winterfell and how many Ironborn had been sent wounded back from King’s Landing and how they fared. They rode out past the edges of the town and through the countryside, until they came to the cliffs that let them look over the The Sunset Sea.

Here, where no-one could see or hear them without them knowing, Yara finally stopped her horse. “Marriage,” she said, looking at the sea

“To Sansa Stark,” Theon responded.

“Is she using you?” said Yara.

Theon felt like the world had suddenly shifted beneath his feet, in a way he hadn’t expected. “I… what? No. She’s not… Using me for what?” He finally managed to say.

“I know what the Bolton bastard did to her,” said Yara. Theon’s cabin had been next to hers. On the nights when he had screamed and thrashed his way out of sleep, she had gone to him, held his head as he’d vomited into the bucket near his bed, held him when he needed to be held, listened to him when he needed to talk his way through the horrors in his head. She had learned more things than she’d ever wanted to know about the finer points of torture and more than enough about what Ramsay had done to Sansa Stark. “She’d be safe with you.”

“Of course she’d be safe with me,” said Theon, puzzled, feeling that he was missing something very large in what Yara was saying.

“I don’t want to lose you for that,” said Yara. “If all she wants is an Unsullied bodyguard to keep men out of her bed, she can fucking hire one.”

Theon looked at Yara for a long moment and then suddenly laughed, a great whoop as he realised what Yara was talking about. “Of course I’m going to keep men out of her bed,” he said. “Because I’d already be in it.”

The look Yara gave him was somewhere between speculation and dawning delight. He grinned back at her. “I mean if there’s anyone who knows you don’t need a cock to fuck the tits off a woman, I would have thought it was you, Yara.”

She stared at Theon for a moment, before the edges of her mouth curled up in the ghost of a smile at her words being echoed back to her. “I thought you weren’t interested in things like that anymore?” she asked.

“I wasn’t,” said Theon. “Then there was Sansa. And then I was.” He smiled out at the sea, the wonder of it still surprising him.

“And the Lady Of Winterfell? Is she interested in such things?” replied Yara. She didn’t know the Stark woman, but the impression she’d developed was that of a prim and proper prude of a girl who had stood back up after a hell of a beating, and with an admirably vicious streak when it came to defending her family.

Theon looked at her from beneath his just too long fringe, and his grin was that of the old Theon Greyjoy - all lust and pride and smirking amusement and Yara realised suddenly how much she’d missed that. “Very interested. Enthusiastic, even,” was all he said, though, because he wasn’t the old Theon anymore.

“Little brother,” Yara responded and now her smile was wide, “you’re a fucking tart.”

He shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “I’m a Greyjoy,” he said. “It’s what we do.” But the soaring joy he felt at claiming back a part of him he’d thought lost forever rang through his words.

It infected Yara and she laughed into the wind from the sea. “Race you back to town,” she said and managed to turn her horse and kick it into a gallop before Theon could even gather up his reins. His whoops of delight as he chased her down the hill made her laugh so much she nearly managed to lose control of her horse and thus the race, except she was his Queen and in the end she somehow managed the win by a neck.

***

When they got back to Pyke, Yara was met at the stables by an Ironborn man Theon didn’t recognise. She drew the man aside as Theon tended to his horse and the discussion in low voices went on so long that Theon ended up unsaddling and grooming Yara’s horse as well. When he was done, the man was finally leaving and Yara turned back to him. “I’ve got to get some things organised,” she said, distracted. “Halden says that three more ships have just come in: we’ve got them back from Euron. They’ve taken a lot of damage. Can you go down to the docks and supervise getting the wounded to the Maester?”

“Of course, my Queen,” responded Theon, falling easily back into his old familiar role. He organised transportation of the wounded on the returned ships to the Ironborn Maester. It took some time to sort all of that out to his satisfaction and when he was done, he was informed that Yara had had to travel to Ten Towers to resolve an issue that had arisen there. Rather than wait for her return, Theon decided to be useful and soon found himself in charge of organising the stripping out of all the damaged parts of the three ships and starting repairs. It was so all-consuming he barely noticed that three weeks went by before Yara returned.

“The children were fighting.” Yara made a face indicating what she thought of some of the more arcane feuds that sometimes re-raised their ugly heads. “Nice job with the ships,” she added, having seen them as she sailed in. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here and become my Master Of Fleet?”

Theon rolled his eyes at her. “Under other circumstances, perhaps,” he replied.

Yara sighed. “We’re only a day or two away from storm season starting, Theon. I couldn’t get back any earlier. It’ll be a couple of months before we can get to Winterfell safely.”

“I know,” said Theon and then backtracked a bit. “We?” he asked.

Yara nodded. “If I’m to consider an alliance between the Iron Islands and Winterfell, I need to know what we both might be signing ourselves up for. Meeting your Lady Sansa would seem the least effort I can put in to make sure we’re not going to tip this whole bag of Lords and Ladies and Queens over and then spend years cleaning up the mess. Much as I love you, little brother, I’m not sure you getting laid again is worth starting a whole new war. Not even a little one."

Theon nodded, no expression on his face. “Of course, my Queen.”

“Don’t give me that look,” said Yara in response. “I’ll do everything I can not to hurt you, Theon. But the Ironborn are taking a beating because of Euron’s stupidity and I’m trying to save as many of them as I can. They’re stubborn as fuck and trying to stop the squabbling is a fucking pain in the arse, but they’re mine now and I’d like to keep them alive.”

“My Queen,” replied Theon. “It’s why I’m here. I’m not seeking your permission lightly, nor does Sansa expect it to be a given. We hope, but we don’t expect.”

Yara gave him a long look, then shook her head. “Fuck, you make being a hard-hearted bitch really fucking difficult sometimes. Sometimes I miss the old Theon. It was much easier being a cunt to him.”

Theon grinned and gave a courtly bow to his sister. “My Queen,” he said and laughed when she hit him on the shoulder and then kissed him on the forehead.

***

_We couldn’t get away from Pyke before storm season on the northern coasts started. It will be a couple of months before it’s safe to sail and leave a ship at anchor at the coasts, but we will travel as soon as we are able. Yara wishes to discuss the finer points of our proposed alliance with you and I will accompany my Queen to Winterfell._

_Did I mention that I love you, Sansa? That seems important to mention._

_Theon_

_***_

_I look forward to discussing our proposed alliance with Queen Yara._

_Be safe._

_Hurry back._

_I love you,_

_Sansa_

_***_

Yara was drinking ale, Theon was not. He’d lost the taste for it and never got it back; he tended to stick to either water or small beer these days. But the meal had been delicious, the freshest of fish brought straight up from the docks, and he was feeling very mellow even without ale.

“So how goes the war?” he asked Yara, taking the opportunity now that they were not, for once, accompanied by a retinue of servants and sailors to see if Yara’s intelligence on the progress of the war at King’s Landing matched his own.

She took another drink, frowned slightly down at the tankard. “Not too bad, actually,” she said. “I’ve got more than a quarter of the Iron Fleet back now and they’re deserting him faster now. We’ve managed to get most of them back into commission already and they’re scattered all down the coasts and making sure Euron can’t make a run for it. Or that Lannister bitch. She’s still holed up in the Red Keep – that thing can handle one hell of a fucking siege, I’ll give it that.”

“So what – thirty ships?” asked Theon.

“About that,” replied Yara. “Thirty-one, I think, including those in Pyke right now. We’ve got the ones that can sail in coves all the way from Storm’s End to Oldtown, and all the way over to Volantis. Every now and then one of Euron’s or Cersei’s tries to sneak out, but we can always catch up with them. They surrender or go to the Drowned God. Cersei’s ships go back to Daenerys, the Iron Fleet come back here.”

Theon nodded. He hadn’t heard the kind of details Yara was giving him, but he’d known the Iron Fleet under Euron’s command had been diminishing in size. The few wounded Ironborn who’d come to Winterfell had fallen in various naval sorties, though, and hadn’t known any details of the disappeared ships; just that they’d been disappearing. “How did you capture the first ships back?” he asked. The system now was obviously working well, but he wondered what had driven the first deserters out of Euron’s clutches.

Yara smiled, thoroughly smug. “I have excellent recruitment skills,” she said, and elaborated at Theon’s raised eyebrow. “I figured there was quite a bit of market opportunity with Littlefinger dead, so I made a deal with all the whores in every house that an Ironborn was likely to frequent when their ships went in for furlough or repairs. There’s no better time to whisper about deserting back home to a bored sailor than when his trousers are around his ankles. I put all the ladies on one hell of a bounty scheme if they could fuck a crew into mutiny; it got my first five ships back and after that, we got a little more direct about picking the ships off. It helped that Euron is so stupid when it comes to man management; he’s got the Golden Company lording it over the Ironborn sailors and that’s going about as well as can be expected. Like an Ironborn’s going to bow down to a sellsword and do it for less than a quarter of the pay. He lets the Company captains beat the Ironborn for “infractions”; all that beating does to an Ironborn is make him harder. Euron won’t have a ship left if the siege lasts another two years. Won’t have a head left, if I judge the Ironborn right.”

“Which you do,” replied Theon. “Euron is... Why would you cut out the tongues of your crew?” he asked. That had always baffled him about _Silence_. “How does that work for the lookout? I mean it really didn’t work out so well for him when I finally tracked your damn ship down. Not like the crew could shout “hey, look out, over there, there’s a man with a bow and arrow!”” He shook his head in wonder at the idiocy of his uncle.

Yara, who had just taken a mouthful of ale, managed to spit most of back into her tankard, rather than all over the table. “Oh, Drowned God, me too,” she said. “Like, did the lookout have to throw rocks or something? Was there a drum? Did they pull on a piece of string that rang a bell? Or did they just – run into things a lot?”

Theon looked at Yara for a moment, biting the inside of his cheeks to stop from laughing at the picture in his head, but then he saw Yara was doing the same and it was the end of him and he began to laugh. Within seconds Yara joined in and together they laughed until they cried. “Oh gods, oh gods,” gasped Theon finally, managing to get some control back over himself. “Yara, stop. Oh, Drowned God, Euron is an idiot.”

“A vicious idiot, but an idiot nonetheless,” Yara managed to wheeze out. “Which is why I’ve got thirty-one ships back. So far.”

“I’m pretty sure the crews are pleased about that,” responded Theon.

“Pretty sure you’re right, little brother. Speaking of crews, we should be able to head up to Winterfell in about ten days. I’ve just got some new banners and sails for _Black Wind_ coming from Ten Towers. As soon as they arrive, we should be able to set sail. We should probably sort out a raven.”

***

_We should be off the coast near Deepwood Motte in twenty days or thereabouts, depending on the wind. If you could organise horses for ten and two packhorses to await our arrival, that means we can get to Winterfell faster._

_I would like to get to Winterfell faster._

_I’ve missed you, Sansa._

_Love_

_Theon_

***

The horses had been waiting for them, by the shores of Deepwood Motte, along with two grooms with their own steeds, who would make their way back in their own time (Sansa, who tried always to be thoughtful, had sent men with relatives at the Motte). They had also had two letters from Sansa, one for Yara that was appropriately formal and respectful, giving Yara Sansa’s regards and hopes that they could be successful in negotiating both the marriage and the alliance, and one to Theon. Theon read that one in private and discovered it was neither formal nor what Catelyn Stark would have described as respectful, but it made him smile for two days straight.

The trip through the Wolfwood had been uneventful, though Theon found his patience wearing as they got closer to Winterfell, until he nearly found himself galloping over the last hill between their small party of Ironborn and the field below the south gate of Winterfell. He stopped himself, though, maintaining his respectful place, his horse a half-step behind Yara as they topped the hill and once again he saw Winterfell. It still looked like it would be there a thousand years after he died, but Theon didn’t mind anymore, now that it also looked like home.

Yara drew to a halt. “Do you think they’ve seen us?” she said, but it was quickly obvious that a watch had been kept out and there was a sudden movement of people on the walls of Winterfell.

“Good,” she said, briskly. “Time to take your place as my bannerman, Theon,” she said.

“My place as…?” he started, confused.

“I told you I had new banners made,” said Yara. “I need a bannerman, and you get to be it, little brother.”

Theon was still confused, but nodded at Yara. She tossed him the cup to hold the end of the pole, and hopping off his horse, he attached it to the side of his stirrup. Yara also dismounted, and collected the pole from the back of the packhorse, and then nodded Theon across to the other one, where the banners that he’d barely noticed had been bundled up. “The white one,” she said.

Theon unwrapped the bundle and stripped the white banner out of the pile and opened it. And stopped still.

“You know how I said it wasn’t worth a small war to get you laid again, little brother?” said Yara softly. “I lied. It might even be worth a middle-sized war.”

“You,” started Theon and stopped. “This is Ten Towers work. You planned this months ago.” He looked up at Yara in something between outrage and delight.

“I did, once I knew it was real between you and her,” she said and stepped close to him, drawing him up into an embrace. “I’m going to make sure they write songs about you, Theon,” she whispered. “Embarrassing songs, that people sing for centuries and girls sigh over.”

“You planned this and didn’t tell me. _Bitch_ _,"_ whispered Theon into her ear, purest joy bubbling inside him.

“That’s Queen Bitch to you,” Yara responded. “Now get on your horse and let your lady know the news.”

Theon’s fingers fumbled as he put together the pole and the banner, but finally he got it sorted out and swung back onto his horse. He waited until the party had settled in behind him and then started down the hill, a brisk walk, then moving into a slow trot.

He looked up on the walls, hoping he would see, and there – there it was – the flash of red hair, standing out even over all of this distance and then he got close enough to see Sansa waving and closer and closer until she could see the banner he carried.

A white field, embroidered, on one half the grey Stark direwolf, on the other half the golden kraken of the Greyjoys. Around them, an edging border, green seaweed entwined with blue winter roses.

And then she was gone from the top of the walls, and he remembered for a single moment a time in his past when he had carried a banner to Moat Cailin for a very different reason, and he thought, ~ _Fuck you, Ramsay Bolton, and everything you tried to take away from us_ ~. Theon wondered if he’d told Yara about that (probably) and if this erasure was part of her gift to him (probably).

Then the south gate was open and Sansa was riding towards him, and he went faster and faster until they met in the field before Winterfell, and he didn’t know how they didn’t kill themselves colliding or falling, but somehow he had let the banner fall and was down from his horse and she was down from hers and his arms wrapped around her, his mouth on hers, his hands tangled in her hair and he lifted her up and spun her around him, and her hands were on his face and in the breaks between kisses, she kept saying, “Theon, Theon,” and he could not stop himself laughing.

From the walls above him, he heard the smallfolk of Winterfell cheering and then Yara’s smug voice behind him, “Songs, little brother; they’re going to write songs about you,” and Theon didn’t mind at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yara makes Theon happy. Theon makes Yara happy. Theon and Yara make your author very happy and are a pure joy to write.
> 
> This was supposed to be the second half of the previous chapter, but I think we can all agree that they weren’t exactly matching in tone.
> 
> And now there’s probably going to be a bit of a hiatus in chapters because to get them married, I need to work out the details of ending the war and who and what comes out of that, which pretty much means I’m off to go and watch 8 seasons of GoT.
> 
> It is an occasional series, though, so I may pop out a non-chronological chapter or two while doing that (and always open to prompts!).
> 
> And I will finally get a chance to respond to all of your lovely comments.


	10. A Welcome Home Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We don’t have time,” he gasped, when he could tear his mouth from hers. “We need to get to dinner. Yara’s waiting.”
> 
> Aka Sansa gets what she wants and what she wants right now (and we mean really RIGHT NOW) is Theon.
> 
> Aka Theon musses Sansa's hair.

A Welcome Home Present 

Queen Yara of the Iron Islands was not one to stand on ceremony.

Theon was quite glad about that fact right now. With ten minutes to go until they were due to arrive at the welcome feast for her, he had been hoping to make the best kind of impression: bathed, shaved, tidied and dressed in his formal doublet and trousers. He was ready to make both Sansa and Yara proud and show he was worthy of Sansa’s hand in marriage and Yara’s trust in making this alliance.

With nine minutes to go, Sansa knocked at the door of his chambers, looking her radiant, sleekest self, the Lady Of Winterfell at her most glorious and intimidating, come to collect him and let him escort her to the feast (limited as it was) after so many months away from Winterfell.

With eight minutes to go, he was pushed into the chair, back against the wall, Sansa straddled over his lap, tongues dancing over each, her hands under the edges of his doublet on the only warm skin she could reach easily, his fisted in her hair, trying with what little was left of his self-control to not ruin her braids.

“We don’t have time,” he gasped, when he could tear his mouth from hers. “We need to get to dinner. Yara’s waiting.”

With seven minutes to go, “I know, I know,” murmured Sansa, and then she gripped his hand in hers and wriggled, pulling at her dress with her other hand until she could ruck it up high enough to guide his hand under it. She dragged his hand up the length of her thigh, until it reached the edge of her smallclothes and under. He groaned at the feel of her hot slick wetness and she captured his groan with her mouth, drawing his tongue deep into her as she used her hand to slide his fingers firmly into her damp heat.

“Oh fuck, Sansa,” Theon said into her mouth, and then curled his fingers up, and found her pearl with his thumb, steady hard strokes over it as she thrust her hips forward against him, until they matched in rhythm. Her kisses were hot against his mouth, then across his cheek, down his neck, curling in on herself so she could concentrate on rocking against his hand, against the steady pressure of his thumb, against the heat of his breathing in her ear. Hers grew ragged and shorter as she rocked her hips harder and harder against him.

With four minutes to go, she fastened her mouth on the point of his neck where it rose from his doublet, using it to swallow her own cries of “gods, oh gods” as her walls clenched around his fingers, a long shudder running the length of her body as she peaked and fell down the other side, her quim dripping juices onto Theon’s hand.

With three minutes to go, Theon said again “we don’t have time,” but Sansa was all Tully now, quicksilver and sleek, her hands too fast for him to capture as she unlaced his trousers and pushed him back further, so she could drag them down his legs. He nearly managed to grab them as she dropped to her knees in front of him but she managed to get her hand on his chest and push him back far enough that she could bury her nose in his red-gold curls and swirl her tongue around his stub until he groaned. Sliding her fingers between her legs, into her own juices, she slicked them up and then slid them between Theon’s legs and then into him. His back arched and he groaned “fuck” as she curled them forwards and found what she was looking for, stroking his internal walls to reach what she thought of as his pearl. He couldn’t help himself then and began to tell her, “there, yes, there, harder, more” as his hands gripped at the edge of the chair to try and stop himself from gripping them in her hair and ruining it.

At two minutes after they should have arrived for dinner, Theon shuddered beneath Sansa’s mouth and hands, tried hard to swallow down one last moaning, “fuuuuuck” and then couldn’t as Sansa looked up at him from between his thighs, licking her lips with a look of heated delight.

“Sansa, fuck,” he said and swooped down and kissed her mouth, knowing it wouldn’t taste like him like it once would have, but knowing it would taste like her and that was all he wanted now, the taste of her on his lips.

“I couldn’t have survived dinner without that,” she said, and then they were frantic, him finding a cloth somewhere (a tablecloth from a side table he thought) and used it to wipe his hands clean and then between her legs, as she gave up and abandoned her saturated smallclothes on the floor of his antechamber. She helped him lace up his trousers, not quite as quickly as she had undone them and he drew his hands through her hair, trying to restore her braids to their sleek splendour. He didn’t succeed, but, “fuck it, we’re so late,” as she ran her fingers through his hair, doing her best to tidy it, and he gripped her hand and they nearly ran down the hallways, only slowing as they reached the entry to the dining hall, where they could see that people were waiting.

Trying hard for some semblance of dignity, Theon offered his arm to Sansa, who took it gracefully and let him accompany her into the dining hall and the empty spots at the head of the table, next to where Yara was waiting patiently.

Ten minutes after they should have arrived, Theon delivered her to her seat at the head of the table, next to his Queen.

He would nearly have considered that they’d got away with it, except Yara missed nothing, and raised an eyebrow in question at him, the fresh red mark on his neck, the stray hairs escaping from Sansa’s braids in a small cloud, the (to be honest) untidy lacing of his trousers. He gave the smallest of shrugs back at her, the side of his mouth flickering upwards.

“I’m looking forward to the feast, Lady Sansa,” said Yara, with a smile that was almost but not quite a smirk.

“As am I, Queen Yara,” replied Sansa, her usual imperturbable self.

“It’s been a long day since we arrived,” observed Yara, “I hope you haven’t had to wait all day to satisfy yourself.”

Theon made a small noise in his throat that didn’t reach as far as Yara, for which he thanked the Drowned God. But Sansa, who was made of sterner stuff, looked at Yara and smiled. “Oh, I just had a snack to get me through the day,” she said. “I find these days that I have such a hearty appetite. I so look forward to having my fill.”

Yara smiled and picked up her ale. “I’m sure my brother can help you out there,” she responded. “He’s always enjoyed eating.” She grinned, looking at Theon out of the corner of her eye. “It runs in the family.”

Beneath the table, Sansa reached out her hand and found Theon’s, gripping it tightly in hers.

Theon, looking at Sansa and Yara, wondered if he was going to survive long enough to make it to his wedding day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I’m dealing with the fact I need to watch 8 seasons of GoT to work out the next bit of what I laughably call a plot by writing smut instead. (And I mean, let’s be honest, my plot can be summarised as "Theon and Sansa are as happy as possible as much as possible as often as possible and sometimes there are kittens", so it’s not that complex, but, you know, I try to be a good author and maintain some structural integrity).
> 
> Also I have a cold and am home sick. This is what results from that.


	11. His Gifted Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theon had learned to tie knots before he’d learned to shape his first letters, half a hundred separate hitches needed for sails and guys and nets and cargo.

His Gifted Hands 

Sansa’s maid, Maisie, hadn’t quite finished lacing her into her gown when the knock came at the bedchamber door. Sansa knew the knock, though, and called out, “Come in,” even as Maisie drew the lacing of her bodice tight through the eyelets and Sansa couldn’t do anything other than turn her head and smile at Theon over her shoulder.

It took several more moments and a flurry of lacing and tying before Sansa was safely ensconced within her gown, her own version of armour. She turned then, to look at Theon, leaning casually against the doorframe and found herself smiling in remembrance. There had always been a loose-limbed quality to Theon. She remembered him in the same pose as he grew into his height, her mother calling him gawky, Sansa too young to really understand what that meant (until she went through her own gawky phase). Then all of his pieces had caught up with each other and, despite the truly prodigious amount of food he put away, he’d managed to graduate to lanky. That comfortable pose had been lost when he’d shrunk and starved under Ramsay but now it was back, a casual acceptance that he owned a body he was training to be strong and to do what he asked of it. Now he was - Sansa tilted her head and studied him for a moment judiciously - lean. 

And handsome, she added in her head, as he noticed the tilt of her head, her eyes inspecting him, and let the corner of his mouth curl up in a smile.

He only nodded at Maisie, however, and asked Sansa, “Ready?”

“Mmm,” confirmed Sansa and, stopping only to thank Maisie and dismiss her, sat down at her dressing table. 

The touch of his hands on her shoulders sent a shock through her and, for a moment, she dropped her right cheek down, touched it to the back of his hand. Then she sat back upright, as Theon reached down and released the ribbon at the end of the simple plait she wore her hair in while sleeping. She felt his fingers, combing upwards, separating the three strands of the plait carefully, teasing it apart for her. Finally he reached the base of the plait, at the nape of her neck, and he let the back of his right middle finger drift up from the top of her gown, the softest touch against her skin beneath the fall of her red hair, up the long length of her neck, leaving a trail that felt like fire behind it, until he slid his hand into the last vestige of her plait and loosened it.

Theon reached forward over her shoulder then, took the hairbrush off the dressing table. He started at the bottom, short strokes to separate the tangled strands at the bottom and then began to work his way up Sansa’s hair, slowly and carefully making sure that there were no knots in the great length of its russet fall. Holding each section at the top, as he brushed downwards, the back of his hand pressed against Sansa’s back, the warmth of it soaking through her bodice. She leaned into the weight of it slightly, and Theon responded, as he always did, with a caress of his fingers across the heavy fabric of her gown.

Sansa remembered, long ago, watching Ned brush Catelyn’s hair at the end of the day, asking her mother why a Lord would do such a thing when her mother had maids. Catelyn had laughed and fondly kissed the crown of Sansa’s red hair. “It’s different, Sansa, when your father brushes my hair,” she said. “You know your father loves the colour of my hair, don’t you? Just like he loves yours,” and Sansa had nodded. Everyone told her how lovely her hair was - so much like her mother’s fiery mane. “He loves me and he loves my hair and when he brushes it, I know he does it because he loves me. So if he brushes my hair before I go to sleep, it reminds us that we love each other very much. Which is harder to remember sometimes than others,” Catelyn had added, not necessarily for Sansa’s benefit.

Sansa had nodded and accepted her mother’s explanation. Her father was a Lord and it was important to little Sansa that he do Lordly things. She hadn’t been sure about brushing her mother’s hair but she understood that Lords did all kinds of gentle things when they were in love. Like give Ladies favours at tournaments and, apparently, brush their wife’s hair.

It had been companionable and comfortable when Sansa had been old enough to notice Ned brushing Catelyn’s hair. She wondered if it had been different when they had first started to fall in love. Whether it had felt like _this;_ this astonishing intimacy.

Theon’s hands would caress all the length of her spine as he teased apart her plait, brushed out the long fall of hair. His fingers would trail along her neck, leaving warmth as intimate as any kiss, as he teased apart the strands that would knot at the nape of her neck. The soft caress of his finger as he drew strands over the edge of her ear and back, tracing the curve of her ear lightly, would make Sansa draw in a sharp breath and it was as much as she could do to make herself not shift in her seat, at the sudden warmth that would flood into the pit of her stomach and, if she was honest, lower still. 

But being Theon, of course, it hadn’t been enough to brush her hair. The first time he had asked Maisie to show him how she braided Sansa’s hair, the maid had gasped in shock. 

“Lords don’t do such things,” she had said sharply and then bowed her head and flushed in confusion at talking back to Lord Theon.

He had only grinned and shrugged. “Sailors do. Archers do,” he’d responded. “Show me.”

Theon had learned to tie knots before he’d learned to shape his first letters, half a hundred separate hitches needed for sails and guys and nets and cargo. He had learned to plait rope before most northern boys knew how to tie their shoes on, and how to make twine and string a bow, tension it and fletch his own arrows before he’d come to the north. It had been awkward at first, when he started again after all that Ramsay had done to his hands, but he had practiced diligently ever since, using it to help build the strength and flexibility back into his fingers, until it had all become second nature again.

So he had taken only one session of watching Maisie show him the different braids she placed in Sansa’s hair to work out all of the variations and ask Sansa’s permission to try them out on her. It had been a lazy, cold day in the keep and Sansa had not been able to stop laughing at the faint outrage of Maisie and so she’d agreed. 

The mood could have been shattered when Theon drew off his gloves and Maisie gasped as she saw the wreck that Ramsay had made of Theon’s hands. But it was shock, not disgust, and when Theon had only raised his eyebrows, Maisie had ducked her head in acknowledgement of her lack of tact and turned back to watch as Theon had created two intricate braids from Sansa’s temples and drawn them back into a knot he pinned with the Stark sigil at the back of Sansa’s head. Sansa had laughed even more at the increasing outrage on Maisie’s face as Theon, other than a couple of times slightly undoing and re-tensioning the braids, completed the task perfectly the first time. 

So it had become their morning ritual, for Theon to appear at Sansa’s bedchamber door when Maisie would be finished dressing her (and generally after he’d been to the kitchens and cadged at least an egg and some porridge off the cook) and to brush and braid Sansa’s hair. 

He had finished brushing it now and his fingers lightly, oh so lightly, lifted a strand of hair from her right temple, then drew it between the fingers of his left hand, a long soft curl of it to separate it completely. Three times he did the same until he could begin the braid that curled around the side of her head and back, lightly anchored by other strands that he lifted, with equal care from the crown of Sansa’s head. When he reached the back of her head, his deft fingers wove the plait swiftly to the end of her hair.

Again, at her left temple, a touch of his hand, so gentle, and the curl of the lock through his fingers. Sansa closed her eyes for a moment, leaned into the next touch on her temple, felt the soft splay of his fingers down onto her cheek for a second. 

There was both reverence and desire in the touch of Theon’s hands, the slow stroke of them through her hair, the soft touches on her skin, and Sansa remembered when she had given up the hope of ever knowing either. Long ago, in King’s Landing, she thought. When Joffrey had proven cruel and Tyrion had proven kind, and all hopes of love had been dashed out of her head, let alone the thought that someone might worship her, even just a little. Only survival had mattered then.

As for desire - there had been lust. Petyr Baelish. And everything Ramsay has done to her. Lust that didn’t recognise limits or boundaries or her wants, but only took without giving. 

But Theon’s touch wasn’t lustful. Instead it desired: desired to please her, desired to tend her, desired her response and her permission and for her to want back, as much as he wanted. 

She felt the swift movements of his hands at the back of her head, as he curled the two braids together, creating an intricate knot that he pinned in place with her shepherd’s knot clasp. Then he took three strands from below the clasp and made a small plait that fell down the centre of her back. It had been the style she was wearing on the Long Night, when Theon had returned to Winterfell, and it was what she chose most often to wear.

Theon finished the plait, tying a small ribbon to hold the ends in place. He reached up again, touching his fingers lightly to her temples to smooth the last small strands into place. Sansa took the opportunity to reach up with her right hand and grasp his, draw it down to her. She placed a kiss in his scarred palm, then leaned her cheek for a moment into their clasped hands. 

“Thank you,” she said.

“It’s good for me,” he said, and she could hear the sudden smile in his voice. “Keeps my fingers supple,” he said and suddenly the middle finger of his left hand was sliding down the long curve of her turned neck, making Sansa shiver beneath his touch.

But she frowned slightly nonetheless and turned to look up at him. “It doesn’t worry you, though?” she asked. “Maisie calls it women’s work.”

Theon snorted, letting Sansa know exactly what he thought of that notion. “Women’s work is to rule Winterfell,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And part of my work is to teach archery to a lot of young men, and this does help with that. Anything that makes me use my hands like this helps them and that helps with demonstrating stringing a bow and fletching arrows.”

He stepped around Sansa then, kneeled down beside her, letting him look up at her face. “And this is not work,” he continued softly, touching his fingers so gently to her temple, to the start of her braids. “This is… it makes me happy, Sansa. To tend you. To please you. You do so much for all of Winterfell. For all of the North. You deserve to be looked after. I could leave it to Maisie, I know, because she loves you. But,” he grinned suddenly, “I love you more.”

Sansa looked at him and reached out, cupping his cheek with her hand, smoothing her thumb over his sharp cheekbones. “That’s a big claim, Theon,” she said, solemnly. “Sometimes Maisie brings me lemon cake, when I’ve had a busy day and haven’t eaten lunch. And doesn’t even have a bite before she gives it to me. Unlike some people who say they love me more and don’t bring me _all_ the cake.”

“Lemon cake, is it?” smiled Theon. “How much lemon cake would it take to prove I love you more?”

“Four slices,” replied Sansa promptly. “No bites taken out of them.”

“And when and where would my Lady like this delivery of the proof of my undying, monumental, possibly starving hungry love for her?” Theon said, extravagantly.

“My chambers,” said Sansa. “When I’ve retired after dinner.”

Theon inclined his head, bowed as much as he could in his kneeling position. “I shall bring all the lemon cake, my Lady. All of it. Proof of my love.”

Sansa leaned forward then, kissed Theon’s cheek lightly, then leaned forward a little further and gave the tiniest gentle nip to his ear lobe.

“And bring two spoons,” she breathed into his ear. “Because I love you enough to give up lemon cake for you, Lord Theon. Just not… all of the lemon cake.”

Theon laughed and Sansa smiled. She liked to tend to Theon, too, and listening to him laugh was the best proof she could have that she was being successful. There were, she suspected, a number of years in his life when he had never laughed at all and she would like to try and make up for those ones.

“And then,” she whispered and leaned back, then ran her fingers through Theon’s curls, over his right ear. “There’s after lemon cake. When we can think of other ways to prove you love me more.”

“Mmmm,” smiled Theon, and he reached up with his hand, sliding the tips of his fingers over the curve of her ear, making her shudder again beneath his touch. “I may already have some ideas,” he said.

“So do I,” breathed Sansa. “And best of all, they’ll help to keep your fingers supple. I feel it’s my duty to help with that. For the defence of Winterfell and the glory of my realm, of course.”

Sansa basked in Theon’s uproarious laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three chapters half written for Gifts but all of them need me to finish watching season 2 and work pressures have made that rather slow. So this random chapter appeared instead which doesn’t need me to finish a season.
> 
> I did say it was domestic Theonsa and this is about as domestic as you can get :)
> 
> Edit: also a rousing "fuck YES!" for Alfie Allen's Emmy nomination.


	12. In The Frozen Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Perhaps you could stay for the welcome feast in a few days and sing some Ironborn verse for us?” replied Sansa. “I have not heard many of the songs of the Ironborn. Much as I love my Lord, his singing is not… the most harmonious.”
> 
> “I sound like cats fucking,” said Theon. “Is what my Queen is too polite to say.”

In The Frozen Present 

Winterfell had been on edge for days. There was always a certain frisson when Lord Theon had been away visiting one of the other keeps or the smaller holdings and Queen Sansa was expecting his return any day. But when he had sailed to the Iron Islands and was due back with the children, and the keep was full of their parents, it became almost (but not quite) unbearable.

It would be easier, Sansa thought, if they knew exactly what day he was due back. But between the variable winds when they were sailing and the fact that some of the children didn’t know that much about riding horses, there was always an uncertainty around when the party would be sighted. There were lookouts posted on the walls, of course, but as the day they were likely to arrive grew closer, they were generally supplemented by at least one parent, and more if the party was late. 

So the first thing Sansa felt, when the call came down from the walls that they could see Lord Theon and his party, was blessed relief. The second thing was a pang of longing so intense that, for a moment, she couldn’t move or even breathe. He was safe and he was back and even with all the ravens that had flown between Pyke and Winterfell, Sansa felt like a great weight fell from her at the call.

Then she was on her feet and calling for her horse and, when she met him on the field outside the walls of Winterfell, it was like the day of their betrothal again, and she didn’t know whether she was laughing or crying but she knew that it still felt like it did the first time she had kissed him. It was only, as it always was, the noises the children made (which tended to run the full gamut from sighs to groans, depending on how romantic a particular child was) that dragged Theon’s mouth from hers. She rested her forehead on his then, both of them laughing at the general disgust they were surrounded by. “I think we’ve been judged, Queen Sansa,” said Theon.

“And found rather revoltingly wanting, Lord Theon,” she replied, then stole one more kiss from him and stepped back. 

“Welcome back, children,” said Sansa to the northern children returning from their months in the Iron Islands. “And welcome,” she added to the Ironborn children, who were looking at her with the wide eyes they always did. “We’ve got your parents and your foster hold families waiting for you in the keep,” she said. “The sooner we get there, the sooner you can all recover from your travels.”

The other men who’d travelled across to Deepwood Motte to accompany Theon and the children back, rounded up all of the youngsters on their varying sized mounts and managed to point them in the right direction and get them moving towards the gates in some kind of order. It allowed Sansa and Theon to fall in behind them all and move at a far more sedate walk then the hectic canter Sansa had wrung from her horse on the way out of Winterfell to greet her husband. Which gave Theon the opportunity, which he was never averse to taking, to reach over and firmly grasp Sansa’s backside with an appreciative grip. She giggled, as she always did, and when a couple of the children turned around and gasped somewhat at the sight of Lord Theon fondling the Queen, he waggled his eyebrows at them and, lifting his finger to his lips, made an exaggerated shushing face. 

Sansa laughed as the children’s eyes grew wide and they turned their faces firmly forward. She laughed again as Theon leaned over and stole another kiss from his wife’s lips before his horse decided that, if its rider wasn’t serious about this whole business, it was time to stop and graze, and Sansa was torn from his grasp. 

She almost doubled over with laughter as she looked back at Theon slumped halfway down his horse’s neck, trying valiantly to reach the reins which had fallen around his horse’s ears and raise its head from the particularly lush and tasty bit of clover it had found. Then the children reached the gate in front of them and she heard the hubbub of parents seeing them again for the first time in months and it felt like all was right in Winterfell again.

*****

Dinner on the first night was a small affair. They always left the welcome feast for the children for a few days, to give them time to recover from the arduous journey and for the Ironborn children to get to know their foster families in peace. So it was mostly a thank you dinner for the men who had taken the horses and ponies down to the Motte and helped Theon wrangle the children back to Winterfell without losing any of them in the Wolfwood.

It was at the dinner that Theon introduced her to one of the men she hadn’t noticed in the initial excitement, an Ironborn man who’d accompanied him back from the Islands with the children. “This is Skellig,” said Theon and the Ironborn man gave her a sketchy bow which was as close to courtly as they tended to manage. “He’s a… you’d call him a bard.”

“And you’d call yourself?” Sansa asked the man, who had the typical weather-worn look of an Ironborn man of middle age.

“A skald, your Grace,” he responded. “I write the stories of the Ironborn in verse, and sing for my supper in the halls and on the ships. I was trained by Skald Erik and know all the great sagas and the small as well as my own songs and can accompany myself on the woodharp. I thought to travel the North until the children return and make some new songs. Now that North and Ironborn are joined by blood.”

Sansa smiled at that. “We have a number of singers who circulate through the north from holding to holding. If you meet one you should get them to sing you the songs they have written about Lord Theon. He’s quite the romantic hero, here in the north.”

“Sansa!” said Theon, his voice somewhere between embarrassed and accusatory. “I’m sure Skellig doesn’t need to hear those ones.” Theon found the fact that there were a number of popular songs written about him truly utterly deeply embarrassing and Sansa took great delight in ensuring they were played every time a bard came visiting. 

“I will keep an ear out for them, your Grace,” said Skellig before Sansa could reply. His voice was grave but there was a twinkle in his eye that Sansa recognised now as the good humour of the Ironborn. 

“Perhaps you could stay for the welcome feast in a few days and sing some Ironborn verse for us?” replied Sansa. “I have not heard many of the songs of the Ironborn. Much as I love my Lord, his singing is not… the most harmonious.”

“I sound like cats fucking,” said Theon. “Is what my Queen is too polite to say.”

“I would be honoured to do so, your Grace,” replied Skellig and then laughed. “I can promise you that not all Ironborn songs sound like cats fucking. Except for the ones that are about cats fucking, of course.” He smiled at Theon and Sansa. “Skald’s songs can be very literal sometimes.”

“That they can,” replied Theon but he grinned in excitement at the thought of sharing something of the Ironborn with Sansa.

*****

They did not linger over dinner, but retired swiftly once the last course had been eaten and the men had been provided with generous serves of wine and ale to refresh themselves from their long journey.

Theon and Sansa had other, more pressing, needs to attend to. So she had shattered into pieces beneath his mouth and hands several times and made him call out to the Drowned God twice before they lay strewn across the bed, finally sated, at least for now. 

It was then that Theon, his head resting on her belly (so he could turn his head whenever he felt the need and drop kisses onto the soft skin of her thigh, which she had propped up beside him) told her of Yara’s plan.

“It’s the long summer,” he said, enjoying the feeling of Sansa’s hands working through his hair, teasing his curls apart and drawing them through her fingers. “The thaw reaches to the top of the world and the ships can sail further than they’ve been able to since - well, since before I’ve been alive. She wants to send a ship to the Frozen Shore and The Land Of Always Winter, to see how far north the Ironborn can go. Now that they aren’t going to run into an army of White Walkers.”

“That sounds interesting,” replied Sansa, more involved in smoothing out the knot she’d found. Theon had only had time for the quickest of baths before dinner and while his hair was now much cleaner, he hadn’t found time to tease out the tangles it tended to form when it got wet. 

“She wants me to go, Sansa,” Theon said. He looked up at her as her hands stilled, but her face didn’t give away what she was thinking. “She wants a Greyjoy to be there and there aren’t that many of us around who can go. She can’t leave right now and all the other Greyjoys are dead or mad or priests or too maimed to manage it.”

“Do you want to go?” asked Sansa, her voice carefully neutral.

Theon stared up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking about it again, and then said, “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s… it’s all new. Somewhere no-one has ever been. I’d like to see it. And to sail there. They’re working on the ship now, strengthening the keel for the ice. Everything is…fresh. And clean. I’d like to go. And I can’t… it’ll be cold there, Sansa. Truly cold. I don’t think my hands and feet will be able to handle that for much longer. If I don’t go now, I don’t think I’d ever be able to go.” He added the last bit quietly. “And Yara asked me.”

Sansa nodded. She knew the ties that bound Yara and Theon were deeper and more complex even than those between her and her husband.  Neither Greyjoy tended to call on those ties; they had worked out enough accommodations and ways to see each other and strengthen the bonds between the North and the Ironborn that it was rare that Yara asked for anything of Theon and even rarer the other way. Which meant, if Yara asked, Theon was almost physically incapable of saying no.

Sansa, wisely, had enough respect for those ties and for Theon’s intense love for his sister to never ask him to choose between them. So she nodded. “When would you go?” she asked. “And how long would you be gone?”

“Yara thinks it’ll take about six months to get everything ready to leave,” said Theon. “And it’ll be about six months of sailing. It’s not that far by ship, but it’ll take a while to get as far into the sea ice as the ship can manage.”

“Six months,” breathed Sansa. “You’ve just got back. I missed you so much…” Her voice trailed away. She didn’t want to make Theon feel guilty or torn but the thought of spending half a year apart from him made her heart seize inside her chest.

Theon turned over, slid up the bed until he was beside her, propping himself up so he could look at her face. “Come with me, Sans,” he asked and his voice was suddenly boyishly hopeful. “Come and sail with me. I’d like you to see the ocean. And the North! The Land Of Always Winter! Imagine what it’s like, Sansa. It’s not just ice. It… it seethes with life. Everyone in Winterfell thinks about the Wall and beyond the Wall where the Night King and the dead ruled. But Ironborn have sailed the edges of the Frozen Shore for centuries and it’s full of life. Come with me and see it.”

“Oh Theon,” replied Sansa and laughed, helplessly fond. “I’m Queen in the North. I can’t just… gallivant off on a sailing trip for six months.”

“You’re Queen in the North. It’s the North. You couldn’t be any more North,” Theon said stubbornly. “Don’t think of it as a sailing trip. Think of it as… a royal procession. You'll be visiting your holdings, that’s all. The rest of the North will cope without you, without us, for six months.”

“Theon,” said Sansa fondly but her tone was final. “If you’re going to be leaving me for six months, so soon after getting back, then I can think of better things you could be doing with your mouth right now than trying to persuade me to do something impossible.”

“Again, Sansa?” grinned Theon. “You’re greedy tonight. And I’m out of practice. Don't you feel sorry for my poor aching jaw muscles?”

“Oh my poor love,” replied Sansa, dazzlingly insincere. “What about those clever fingers of yours? How tired are they?”

But she was a little slow because Theon’s hands were already dancing down the long, pale length of her. The Queen’s Consort was, after all, always responsive to his Queen’s desires.

*****

Sansa’s tactics, though, didn’t work for long. The next night, Theon tried wheedling. “It won’t be as much fun without you,” he said. “Come with me, Sansa. Pleeeeeease.”

Sansa laughed. “I haven’t heard you say it like that since I was eight years old, Theon. And no. It’s impossible. And I’ll be sick. I’m always seasick.”

“The Ironborn have herbs that’ll help with that. And it goes away after a couple of days anyway. Mostly. Come sail with me, Sansa.”

“I’m not going with you,” replied Sansa.

Theon pouted. He didn’t pout often and Sansa thought he looked ridiculously adorable with his curls flopping over his forehead and his bottom lip sticking out. “I’ve got six months,’ he said. “And you can say no as much as you want. But I am going to talk you into going with me.”

“Of course you are,” smiled Sansa and Theon gave her a hopeful sideways look until she rolled her eyes at him.

*****

The next night was the welcome feast for the children and Sansa was spared from any further attempts by Theon to talk her into sailing with him. Instead Winterfell’s dining hall was filled with the chatter of excited families, those who had their own children return and those who had new Ironborn fosters for the next few months.

The fosterage exchange had been in place some years now and the feast had changed from the first time, when both children and foster families had been terrified and it had all been stilted and awkward, to the celebration of return and welcome it now was. Vast quantities of food appeared and filled the bellies of ravenous children, wine flowed freely for the families, and a number of mummers, who had put on their play for the children during the day, now strolled through the hall, entertaining everyone with sleight of hand and puppetry. A Northern bard, sensible of the likely outcome in coins, had made sure he’d arrived in time to sing several songs after supper. He’d been to Winterfell before and trotted out those songs that Queen Sansa enjoyed the most; a ballad of Florian and Jonquil, Jenny Of Oldstones, Lady Death And The Long Night and its companion piece, the Hero Of The Godswood (the last leading to Theon visibly cringing at each ringing reprise of the chorus and excited pointing of the foster families to the Ironborn children to show that both the North and the Ironborn could claim the Hero as their own). The hall quieted as the bard sang, as everyone enjoyed the music and the younger children began to tire noticeably. 

It was with considerable excitement, then, that Sansa announced that Winterfell had been blessed, for the first time, with the presence of a skald, who had agreed to sing Ironborn verses for them. Skellig made his way to the front of the room, the bard stepping aside but remaining to see if there would be new songs to add to his repertoire. 

Skellig took a few moments to tune his woodharp, making sure the notes rang true in the large hall. Then he began to pluck the strings, modulating the sparse, clear notes until the tune coalesced. It was a melancholy, yearning tune, a cascade of minor notes that spoke of a deep sadness, a longing. Sansa saw, from the corner of her eye, Theon’s head rise up to stare at the skald and when she looked at him, his eyes were shining and fixed on Skellig, his whole face filled with the yearning that the notes called for. 

Then Skellig began, not to sing, but to sing-speak the words, as she had been told was often the way of skalds, and Theon’s lips moved, making the shape of the words that he obviously knew by heart.

 

_I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,_

_And all I ask is a long ship and a star to steer her by,_

_And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,_

_And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking._

 

_I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide_

_Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;_

_And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,_

_And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying._

_I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant sailor’s life,_

_To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;_

_And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,_

_And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long day’s over._

 

“Oh,” said Theon, leaning back in his seat as the last few notes died away. “It’s Sea Fever.” And then the harp went silent and Theon was enthusiastically pounding on the table in response, joined first by the other Ironborn, then by everyone else. Skellig looked across at Theon and gave a short nod, and Sansa realised that he’d started deliberately with a song that would appeal to the Ironborn lord who lived so far from the sea.

Skellig began to pluck the starting notes of his next song, and Sansa waited for Theon to turn to her, smile and share his feelings with her, as he always did. She frowned instead, as his gaze stayed on Skellig, his eyes shining and enraptured, his lips beginning to move again as Skellig started to sing-speak.

Sansa took a drink from her wine and stared into it for a second, wondering why she felt such restless discontent that Theon was excluding her from his obvious joy. The song - Sea Fever? - had obviously stirred feelings she had no part of and Sansa did not like what that made her feel.

But she had long since learned to think through things before she said anything and the dawning of realisation did not take long to occur. This was Ironborn, she knew, but it was beyond what Theon tended to say of the Greyjoys - that they were famous for their prowess in archery, navigation and fucking. This was something deeper, culture that was taught to them as children, the words that set out what the sea meant to them, and told their children what the Ironborn were. 

Sansa realised, suddenly, that she really had no idea what being a Ironborn meant to Theon. She had always given him all the space and time he needed to stay connected with it, had encouraged him to visit the Islands whenever he could be spared and she knew how much he loved sailing in the longships. And she wondered if he had tried; he didn’t sing (they all agreed that was for the best), but had she ever shown any interest in the fact that the Ironborn had songs? She hadn’t even known what a skald was called. Were there Ironborn books? She knew Theon had brought a small number of volumes home each time he visited Yara, but Sansa had never asked to read them or even see them. She had been busy, but still, she had never thought to ask. Were there Ironborn plays? Ironborn ales or beers or coppersmiths? Mosaic makers or stone masons? She knew none of it and Sansa suddenly wondered if Theon had stopped including her in his feelings about being an Ironborn because she had somehow made him feel that she was not interested.

In all the years they’d been married, she had never visited Pyke.

She thought through all of it until Skellig had finished his songs, and Theon rose and thanked him and the Ironborn children gathered around, some leading their foster siblings by the hand to meet the forbidding looking skald. Theon was shining with joy and when he finally returned to Sansa he kissed her on the crown of the head before resuming his seat.

“That was wonderful,” he said, and she made her decision there and then.

She didn’t tell him until they’d retired to their bedchamber though and he was sliding into the bed beside her, his body almost humming with happiness. 

“I’ll come with you,” she said, so abruptly it actually took him a few moments to realise what she was meant.

For a moment Theon stared at her, his mouth hanging open in shock, before he closed it with a snap. “You’ll come with me?” he said, slowly and softly, and then a great smile bloomed across his face.

Sansa nodded. “I thought about it. You’re right - I can organise for one of my bannermen to look after Winterfell, you’ve told me Rodri can take over master of arms if needed, we can make sure that the keep is defended if needed. We’ve been at peace for years and… and I’ll come with you, Theon,” she finished abruptly. Just because she’d agreed didn't mean she didn’t find the whole concept somewhat terrifying.

But it was worth it for the look on Theon’s face and the tenderness with which he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently.

“Sansa Stark, I love you,” he said and she smiled and kissed him back.

“Just so you know,” she said, “I’m not very good on ships. I’m definitely going to be sick.”

*****

True to her word, Sansa was sick. Violently, spectacularly sick. 

It took a few days, the Ironborn herbs and Theon’s solicitous tending that ensured she made it up to sit miserably on the deck, keeping her eyes on the horizon in the fresh breeze with a large bucket at her feet, before she finally got her nausea under control.

It was only when she was finally feeling better that Theon told her that Mikka, who had been in charge of the tender bringing them out to the _Endurance_ (as the reborn ship had been named) had never known anyone who was sick over the side of the tender before they even reached the ship. “I think he was quite impressed,” said Theon, kindly but with a grin on his face.

“Oh Theon, it feels so terrible,” said Sansa, wrapped in what felt like a hundred shawls. She hadn’t felt warm since she’d been on the ship, but her inability to keep down any food probably hadn’t helped there.

“You’re past the worst of it, my love,” replied Theon. “You’ve had time to get used to it now. You’ll have your sea legs soon.”

She didn’t believe him, but he turned out to be right. With every passing hour, Sansa felt better and by the time dinner came around, she was actually able to join the crew in the mess, although she could only manage some dry bread. But she kept it down, and survived the teasing of the crew and even managed to sink a few barbs back of her own. Theon looked concerned at first, knowing the nest of vipers she’d survived at King’s Landing who used words to destroy, but realised soon that Sansa recognised it for the terrible sense of humour of the Ironborn and was perfectly happy to join in the verbal rough and tumble. 

And when Sansa woke the next morning, she felt wonderful. And ravenous. She didn’t even wake Theon from where he was wedged beside her in their narrow bunk, but made her way up to the mess by herself. When Theon woke, she was out on the deck, tucking into a frankly enormous plate of salt pork and beans, a tankard of small beer by her side.

“Feeling better?” he asked, somewhat facetiously and she beamed up at him.

“It’s wonderful, Theon,” she replied. “It’s so blue and so big and there’s just… what are those birds?” She pointed. “They’re so little and they run on the water - I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Storm petrels,” replied Theon. “They come down from the north and live over the sea most of the time. You’ll see them everywhere we go,” and Sansa actually clapped her hands in joy at hearing that, because she’d been delighting in the antics of the little birds for the last half hour or so.

Over the next few days, Sansa grew used to the rhythms of the ship. There were a few other women on board - Yara had been working hard on changing the ways of the Ironborn and women were now starting to crew on the longships. They were hard to distinguish from the men, dressed in similar trousers and coats, water and windproof and practical. For the first week or two Sansa refused to join them, sticking to her dresses and boots, sure that the comfortable practical wear that survived the North’s winters would work on an Ironborn ship. What she hadn’t factored in was how wet everything was on board a longship. The fourth time she ended up saturated because of an unexpected wave, she had fled to the cabin she shared with Theon to try once again to wring out the hem of her dress. When Theon came looking for her, she’d taken one look at his enquiring face and burst into tears, and managed to sob out how frustrating and cold she was finding it and that her heavy woolen dresses, so practical in Winterfell were no use at all on board. 

Theon had soothed her until the worst of her sobbing had passed and then said, “Stay there, Sansa,” as he rummaged in the trunks they’d brought with them. He pulled out a package from its depths and unwrapped it. “I thought this might happen,” he said simply. “So I had these made for you.”

They were the dark tones and treated leather and fishskin that all the Ironborn wore when sailing, waterproof and windproof and made for the sea. “Made for me?” asked Sansa, wondering why being at sea had made her brain feel so slow. 

“I know who your dressmakers are, Sans,” said Theon. “And they know your measurements. They thought it was a bit of a novelty, really, making Ironborn fashion.” He smiled at what he held. “There’s shirts and coats and trousers for you and there’s a pair of waterproof boots at the bottom of my trunk. That should make you feel better. You can’t spend all your time wet; you’ll freeze to death.”

Sansa felt incredibly self-conscious the first time she put the trousers on, unused to wearing anything that skimmed so tightly over her curves. It wasn’t helped by Theon’s extremely appreciative feeling up of her backside while they were alone in the cabin, though he desisted as soon as he realised how uncomfortable she was feeling. She expected, used now to the crude humour of the Ironborn, that she’d have to fight off both comments and possibly hands for the first few days but it was like she’d gone into the cabin a foreign woman and emerged as Ironborn crew. There was a gruff greeting or two and she knew there was at least the odd appreciative glance but it felt like the crew suddenly relaxed around her.

They relaxed even further when she found her role amongst them. Theon was in his element, she knew that, watching the ease with which he worked with the crew, the obvious depth of knowledge, the way he so easily both led changes in the sail’s set and the ship’s course and but also worked as part of a team with the rest of the crew to keep everything as smooth as possible. For the first couple of weeks, Sansa did her best to stay out of the way, taking the opportunity to get to know the birds that danced the skies and seas around them and the fish that were caught for the majority of their meals. 

She was sitting in the mess, reading alone, when Theon stormed in, swearing heartily and quite creatively. Sansa raised an enquiring eyebrow at him and he stopped, drew a deep breath. “ _Fucking_ foresail ripped,” he said vehemently. “We’ve got a spare but it’s a fucking pain in the fucking arse to fix the fucking thing. _Fucking_ Sten,” he added, obviously trying to get that out of his system so he wouldn’t rip into the youngest and least experienced member of the crew publicly. 

“Bring it to me,” said Sansa and shrugged when he looked at her. “If there’s anything I know how to do, Theon, it’s sew.”

It felt good, to find the place she could fill in the crew, for there were always sails and nets and clothes that needed repairing on any longship. Sansa went from burden to valued crew member on the day she presented Theon with the beautifully repaired foresail.

They continued to sail north and Sansa grew to love the sea. Not in the bone-deep way that Theon did, but she grew to love its changing colours and moods, the life that teemed within it. The first time she saw a whale breach in the distance she had squealed and clutched the nearest passing crewman’s arm, demanding he tell her what sort of fish was that big. “Not a fish,” said Mikka (who Sansa was sure thought she was a bit touched). “It’s a whale. Have you never seen a whale before?”

“I live in Winterfell,” said Sansa. “When was I ever going to see what a whale looked like?” 

Mikka rolled his eyes, patted her hand gently and disengaged it so he could continue on with his work. Sansa kept clinging to the rails, hoping she would see another whale leaping into the sky. She could barely contain herself a few days later when Theon called her up from their cabin in the early hours and she found that the ship was surrounded by a whole family of whales who rose and sank around them and for several hours rolled along beside the ship.

“We could eat for a month if we could catch one of those,” said Trygve and Sansa stared at him, so horrified that he added, “It’s not like we could catch one. Keel’s too shallow, ship’s too light. We’d capsize trying to get it on board. 

“Good,” hissed Sansa and turned her back on Trygve as he laughed at her. 

The first few storms they met at sea, Sansa survived by burying herself under every blanket she could find and hiding in their cabin until Theon came and dug her out of the bed when it was all over. But slowly she got used to them, and while she would never be entirely comfortable with a storm at sea, she stopped being deeply afraid and could at least appreciate why Theon tended to come into their cabin part way through, once the sails were safely furled, soaked through and laughing at the thrill of riding it out. 

And then, suddenly, they were in sight of the Frozen Shore, passing the tiny  rocky islets that teemed with seabirds nesting in the heights and masses of seals at their base, some sleek, some fat, some with great ivory teeth that looked fearsome even from a distance. The water was suddenly strewn with ice that the ship picked its way through and then more ice, some thin enough that they could ride the strengthened keel onto it and crack it, to seek the open leads that took them ever northwards, but more and more so thick that they could only progress by following the calls of the lookout, who called down to them the paths they needed to take to reach the ever-dwindling patches of open sea. At last the day came when they was no more open sea at all, only the dense sea ice and, frozen within it, the great heights of icebergs, some white, some blue. 

Sansa had seen dragons, and The Godswood in winter, King’s Landing, Highgarden, the Eyrie and the Riverlands and still she thought that The Frozen Shore may have been the most beautiful thing she could ever have imagined. And she only had to look at Theon’s shining face to know he felt the same.

“We want to go on,” Theon said to Sansa and she frowned at him.

“Go on?” she asked. “Even I understand we’re frozen in here. How are we supposed to go on?”

“We’ve got a couple of small sleds,” replied Theon. “Not that we can go very far with them, but enough to make it a few days further north. As far north as anyone has ever been. Even the wildlings don’t come here.” He looked exhilarated at the thought, and Sansa found it was catching.

“Do I get to come?” she asked him. 

“You’re Queen in the North,’ he replied. “It’s as north as you could ever be. If you’re sure you want to try it, Sansa?”

“I’m sure,” she said, and looked at Theon, and suddenly knew that they were both thinking of the same moment, of him leading her through the frozen landscape, a desperate flight that had bound them together for life. She reached up and touched his cheek gently and he put his hand over hers and kissed her palm. 

“At least you won’t have to cross a frozen river this time,” he said to her and somehow she found it in herself to laugh at that. Time had healed a great many things, they had found.

It was only to be a short, sharp trip, so Sten, Ulf and Harran took the small sleds, with just enough food to last a few days. Theon and Sansa were  travelling light, but with long poles to test the ice before them and make sure they didn’t fall into any of the frozen crevasses or weak points that lurked beneath the ice

Clad in furs pulled from their storage in the hold, they set out. The ice was solid and surprisingly smooth and they made good speed north. The air was so clear, the land so starkly white, that they could see the small rocky outcrops where islets had been enclosed by the ice and see the birds that nested there and sometimes the bright white pelt of a snow fox slinking onto the outcrop and trying to steal the eggs from the offended birds. They came across small holes in the ice. “Where the seals breathe,” Ulf had explained to Sansa. Not just the seals, for they found one once and stopped to eat near it and Sansa had gasped as a small whale, as white as the ice that surrounded it had risen into the air and then sank away again. 

Far in the distance, thankfully, they had seen a great white bear. “Eat the seals,” grunted Ulf, who had long sailed near the frozen edges of the sea and was, Sansa noted, a man of few words. 

It was on their last day heading north, though, that it happened. They had stopped, discussing whether to go on for a few more hours or turn back, when Sansa managed a strangled, “Theon!” 

He looked at her and then where she was pointing and he drew in a great breath.

Direwolves. Not one, not a mated pair or a small family, but a true pack. At least eighteen, Sansa counted, though they were strung out walking across the frozen landscape and Sansa wasn’t sure if she was missing a couple at either end.

“Direwolves,” she breathed. “They aren’t lost to us.” And she reached out and caught Theon’s hand, needing to share the wonder of what she was seeing with him.

They watched until the entire pack curved out of sight, lost in the distance and the white glare, then, without further words, turned back to the ship. It was the end of their time in the farthest north and somehow they all knew it.

The trip back was swift. Sansa expected scepticism, at least from Mikka, when they told the crew of the direwolves, but there was none, because the truth of what they had seen was so clear on all of their faces. 

That night, despite the cold and the cramped confines of their bed, she drew Theon to her, found a way to love him, seated on his lap, his back against the wall of the cabin. She had ridden his hand to her peak, her head falling back as she swallowed her cries, and when she came down the other side and looked at him, worship was written across his face. “My Queen in the North,” he said, and she felt the title sink into her bones in a way it never had before.

*****

It was the stillest of days, only the mildest of breezes driving the ship towards home. They had escaped from the ice only a few days before, but the day was crisp and clear and the cold was invigorating rather than wearing. 

It was only because it was so still that Theon had persuaded Sansa to go up to the crow’s nest with him. At first she had travelled up the rungs set into the mast quite easily but halfway up had made the mistake of looking down. 

“Theon,” she whispered and then, “Theon!” and it was nearly a scream.

He had been several rungs below her, but he swarmed quickly up the rungs until he was only one step below her, his hands on the rung below hers, his arms suddenly surrounding her. “You’re fine, Sansa,” he said. “You’re safe and I’m here and you’re okay. I will never let you fall, Sansa.”

“I know, I know,” she said, her voice shaking. “But it’s all - the deck… it’s so far _down!_ ”

“Don’t look down,” said Theon, his voice soothing. “Look up, Sansa. Just as far as the next rung above your hand. It’s not far, you can see. Just reach up that far and step up.”

Sansa bit her lip. She was brave. She knew she was brave. She had jumped off the walls of Winterfell, faced the wights from the crypts, survived Ramsay Bolton, destroyed Petyr Baelish, and Theon Greyjoy would never let her fall. She was brave and the next rung was only a few inches above the one she held and she reached up and grasped it and took one step. 

Then another step and another, looking only upwards, feeling Theon’s warmth behind her as he ascended one step behind her, his arms holding her safe.

And then they emerged into the crow’s nest and Theon closed the hatch and suddenly she was safe, enclosed in the rails, the floor solid beneath her feet. She drew a deep and trembling breath, then drew herself up to her full height and made herself look outwards.

“Oh,” said Sansa and Theon grinned behind her as he heard the wonder in her voice. 

The sea was spread out beneath them, the great blue arc of it filling the world as far as the eye could see. And it was a curve, an arc, the horizon bending away. In the distance, Sansa could see the backs of whales far away and at the very edge at the north, she thought she could see the sky shine paler where the sun’s light reflected from the ice.

“Oh Theon,” she said as she slowly made her way around the edge of the crow’s nest, taking her time to see all of it. And then she turned back to look at him and threw herself forwards, into his arms. “Oh Theon, it’s _wonderful_.”

“It is,” he said and what he was going to say was cut off as Sansa kissed him. It was exuberant at first, a joyful celebratory kiss, but then it changed and Sansa’s mouth grew hungry beneath his, her tongue pressing against his, her hands roaming across his back. He responded by holding her tighter, drawing her lower lip into his, then a series of soft nips at her tongue that moved downwards, starting to draw a line down the length of her neck.

Until from far below, they both heard Mikka’s voice bellowing up at them. “Oi, Greyjoy,” he shouted. “No fucking in the crow’s nest! If you bang too hard you’re gonna fall out and I’m not cleaning the fucking mess off the deck.”

Theon’s head bowed into the space between them as he laughed and Sansa joined him. “Maybe we should go back down,” he suggested and Sansa nodded.

They went down the same way they’d come up, Theon going first, a step before Sansa, encouraging her softly to look no further than the next rung down. When they were close enough to the deck for her to feel much more comfortable, he moved down a further step below her, to give her more space to reach the rungs.

It also meant, much to Theon’s delight that he got to watch the delightful wriggle of Sansa’s backside, clad in tight trousers, as she descended.

“Has anyone ever told you that your arse is a masterpiece?” he asked Sansa.

“There is,” responded Sansa, “this impertinent Ironborn man who follows me everywhere telling me things like that. He seems to think that the fact that I married him means he’s allowed to make quite an extensive commentary on the majestic nature of my arse.”

“It is majestic,” replied Theon. “Regal. Enticing. Magnificent.” He stepped back onto the deck as he arrived at the bottom of the ladder. “Flexible. Pliant,” he grasped Sansa by the shoulders as she reached the deck, spun her into his arms, his hands descending to firmly grip the object of their conversation. “Rounded. Luscious. Pert. Delicious,” he whispered into her ear. 

“And no fucking on the deck,” Mikka interrupted as he walked by. “I’m not cleaning that mess up either.”

And both Sansa and Theon dissolved into laughter.

*****

It was a clear night, lit by a waxing moon and the steady light of the stars casting their broad glow across the dark sea. They were halfway home or thereabouts, somewhere over the deeps, where, if the Ironborn cast their deepest nets on their longest lines, strange soft creatures were sometimes found within them. 

There were few on board, but Theon had felt restless and had left Sansa near asleep in their cabin, coming up to breathe the crisp air and hope it would tire him. 

He was leaning on the ship’s railing, looking down into the water, enjoying the faintest glow of phosphorescence that occasionally flowered in the sea beneath the stars.

So it was perhaps understandable that, at first, he did not realise what he was seeing. He thought it was a deeper glow of whatever made the waves shine or perhaps the reflection of the moon. It was only when he looked up and realised the moon was in another part of the sky that he tried to puzzle out what he was seeing beneath the ship. And then his perspective shifted and all of a sudden he realised what it was. 

It was an eye, a vast eye, not far beneath the waves, staying below him as the creature it belonged to kept pace with the ship. And then he could see what it was, and Theon made the smallest sound as he saw the edges of the great head of the kraken and beneath its eye, the vast length of its arms that trailed back, longer than the whole ship.

He should have been frightened, he knew, but he wasn’t, filled instead by a strange sense of calm and a growing wonder that suffused him with something like warmth. He continued to watch and realised that the kraken was doing nothing other then keeping pace with the ship, its eye staying below him. Whatever it was doing, Theon knew the ship was in no danger. 

Signe was walking part him and he grasped her arm, drawing her to the rails, holding a finger to his lips to quiet her as she realised what he was showing her. “Get Sansa,” said Theon, quietly, urgently. “Get Sansa. Get everyone. But quietly.”

Theon watched the kraken until Sansa appeared beside him, looking muzzy with sleep, wrapped up in blankets. That changed when he showed her what he was looking at. It took a few moments to work out what it was, and then he felt her arm stiffen beneath his hand, and she was suddenly alert. 

Slowly he saw the crew all come to the rails and heard the low murmur sweep along as they all realised what they were seeing. Then there was only silence as the watched the kraken, the sigil they all served beneath, keep pace with them. 

Theon didn’t know how long they watched but he was cold and stiff when the kraken rolled away from the ship, and then down, back into the depths. There was one last flurry of tentacles below the surface and then it was gone.

Finally the crew was freed from the spell the kraken had cast over them and the exclamations they made were split almost evenly between swearing and invocations of the Drowned God. 

“It was a kraken, Sansa,” managed Theon. “A kraken!”

“I know,” replied Sansa, her voice full of awe.

“No-one’s seen one for hundreds of years!” said Theon, drawing a shaking hand through his hair. 

“I think it’s the world,” said Sansa softly. 

“The world?” said Theon, trying to catch up with Sansa’s thoughts. 

“We saved the world’s memory. We fought for Bran, for the three-eyed raven against the Night King. I think… I think it wants to thank us. We saw the direwolves. And now we’ve seen the kraken. I think the world gave us that to say thank you.”

Theon stared at Sansa for a moment and then the strange calm wonder that had filled him at the sight of the kraken came back. “I think you’re right,” he said softly. “I don’t know why, but I think you’re right.” His eyes shone at Sansa. “The kraken lives, Sansa. They’re still in the depths.”

“And the direwolves are still in the north. Maybe we haven’t lost all the magic in the world,” said Sansa and her eyes were also shining.

“I can’t wait to tell Yara,” said Theon. “I’ll have to send a raven as soon as we get to the Motte.”

“Why don’t we tell her in person?” replied Sansa. When Theon looked at her, she shrugged. ”I know it’ll make us a little later home to Winterfell, but no one was quite sure when to expect us back anyway.”

“So we go home by the Iron Islands,” said Theon, and his voice was suddenly and unexpectedly hopeful. 

“Yes,” said Sansa and reaching forward, drew his face to hers and kissed him. “I never would have guessed before this trip, but it turns out I’d really like to see Pyke.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’ve finally managed to finish Season 2 (Theon! Oh Theon! Such terrible daddy issues. And Sansa is such a brave and clever little naïf) but this was mostly written anyway, so here it is. But further actual plot advancement (not that this series actually has any kind of real plot) is on its way.
> 
> This was heaps of fun to write - I have cruised to the Antarctic and I promise the Frozen Shore is as beautiful as Sansa thinks it is.
> 
> The Ironborn song is a very lightly revised version of a poem named Sea Fever by John Masefield who would have made an excellent Ironborn skald. He was a man who really got ships.
> 
> The Endurance was the ship sailed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, one of my life heroes, on his Antarctic expedition. It seemed a fitting name for an Ironborn ship :).


	13. How To Present The Benefits Of An Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She’s right, Theon,” said Yara, thinking it was probably a wise time to put in a word. “Queens and Ladies don’t get leeway. We’ve got to be ten times as good as a man to get half the credit. Or have some big fucking dragons.”
> 
> “Or an Iron Fleet. Or the Mountain,” added Sansa. “And I don’t have any of those. Just my bannermen and I need them to be loyal to me.”

How To Present The Benefits Of An Alliance

If she’d heard about it afterwards, Yara Greyjoy would have said she’d have paid a decent amount of gold to be there when Sansa Stark said to Theon Greyjoy’s face that Robb Stark was an oath-breaker. Being in the middle of it, though, even with a tankard of really quite excellent Northern ale in hand, just turned out to be uncomfortable.

“You can’t say that,” Theon had gasped, nearly surging out of his chair, only stopping himself by his death grip on the end of the chair’s arms. “Robb was an honourable man.”

Sansa did not back down, standing firm in front of Theon, despite the blazing anger that was suddenly written on his face. “He was,” she said to Theon, her voice even. “And he broke his oath.”

“I know betrayal, Sansa,” ground out Theon, deliberately not looking at her. “Robb Stark did not betray _anyone_ ,” and the last word was nearly shouted.

“Robb broke his oath to Walder Frey,” said Sansa. “He broke our mother’s oath. He lost the war in the north as soon as he married Talisa.” Her tone was still even and calm, but Yara could see the pulse beating in her throat, a rapid flutter. “I can’t make those mistakes, Theon. I can’t afford it. I can’t hold territory with a sword. I have to hold it with honour and loyalty.”

“Walder Frey was a traitorous bastard who slaughtered Robb and Lady Catelyn like fucking cattle,” Theon’s voice was almost a cry, his own role in the fall of Winterfell, the scattering of Bran and Rickon, underpinning it, making guilt into anger. “All the Freys were. They deserved what Arya did to them.” _I deserve what was done to me,_ was what he did not say out loud.

“Yes, they did,” said Sansa, her voice steely. “They killed my mother, Theon. My _mother_. And Robb was my brother, too. But if Walder hadn’t been able to point at Robb’s broken oath, and Robb hadn’t driven away the Karstarks, then the North wouldn’t have had an excuse not to fall on the Twins and slaughter the whole vile lot of them. _I can’t make those mistakes._ Robb could threaten to put men to the sword - I can’t do that. I need my bannermen to be loyal to me and come when I call them to arms, or I will lose Winterfell.”

“She’s right, Theon,” said Yara, thinking it was probably a wise time to put in a word. “Queens and Ladies don’t get leeway. We’ve got to be ten times as good as a man to get half the credit. Or have some big fucking dragons.”

“Or an Iron Fleet. Or the Mountain,” added Sansa. “And I don’t have any of those. Just my bannermen and I need them to be loyal to me.”

“Robb,” said Theon, and he closed his eyes. “He didn’t deserve to be betrayed.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Sansa. “Not by you. Not by Walder Frey. Not by any of his men. But he was betrayed, because he made mistakes. He was our brother, Theon. And he was a good and honourable man. But he made terrible mistakes and I need to learn from them, or I won’t be the Lady of Winterfell for long.” There was the smallest twitch of her lips as she added. “Unless I can persuade Jon to teach me how to ride his dragon.”

“Or be able to call on the Iron Fleet,” said Theon, very softly. His hands loosened on the end of the chair’s arms and he managed to lift one and run it through his hair. All of them could see how hard it was shaking; none of them drew attention to it.

“To at least have the option of asking,” replied Sansa, her eyes locked on Theon’s as he finally looked at her again. “I need to make my alliance with the Iron Islands palatable to the North. Not just palatable - enticing. I need to make _this_ alliance work, Theon, because I can’t make any other. Not with an offer of marriage as part of the terms, anyway.” Her voice dropped, softened, but she did not take her eyes from Theon’s. “I’m not strong enough. Not to give myself to any other man. I couldn’t make those vows again to anyone but you, Theon. I couldn’t…” Sansa paused, did not say the rest of that sentence. “Not willingly. Except for you. So I need to make this alliance work, so I can keep all of my oaths.”

Whatever happened between them then, all Yara could see was the sudden softening in Theon’s face. “Sansa,” he said and nothing else, but she smiled and her eyes were suddenly bright.

Yara cleared her throat suddenly, pretending it was because of the last swig of ale she’d taken. “So you’re thinking of handing over the Iron Fleet, are you, little brother?” she said, with a certain emphasis on the word little.

Sansa laughed suddenly. “Considering Winterfell is landlocked, I don’t think I’d be calling on it all that often,” she said and Yara chuckled at her words and a few moments later, and somewhat shakily, Theon joined in.

“But men perhaps,” Sansa went on. “Winterfell is safe for now, but there are so few northern Houses left that I can call on. We’ve lost Karstark and Umber and Mormont, and the Dreadfort lies empty. Lord Manderly has no sons left, nor does Lord Cerwyn have any and they have barely enough men to hold their own Houses. I will need men to man Winterfell when those who went south return.”

“Never trust a Greyjoy,” said Theon softly. “Lady Catelyn used to say it, just loud enough for me to hear. And our father proved her right. We proved her right. Yara held Deepwood Motte for years and half the north still thinks I sacked Winterfell and killed Bran and Rickon. House Glover would revolt if you had a force of Ironborn at Winterfell. We need to build trust before that would be acceptable. We need to prove that Yara has turned the Iron Islands from the Old Ways. It will take time.”

“And yet I must trust House Glover, who did not even come to fight against the dead? House Cerwyn? House Manderly? Who would not declare for Jon against Ramsay?” replied Sansa. “I must trust them more than those who fought the dead for Winterfell, who support us in the war against the Lannisters? Robett Glover lurks in the Motte and gives not a single man to any cause of the Starks for the last few years and I must bow to his wishes?”

“We did what we did,” said Yara bluntly. “Between Balon and Euron, the Ironborn picked some terrible kings, but Theon and I played our part in our father’s stupid fucking plans. Glover barely extends you trust and loyalty now. You cannot ask for it when you would ask him to bow to those who took his house from him.” 

“And took your house from you,” added Theon. “And if I hadn’t taken Winterfell and weakened its defences, then there would have been no Ramsay Bolton and Lord Cerwyn wouldn’t have had to watch his father, mother and uncle flayed in front of him.”

“Do not,” said Sansa, sharply, frowning at Theon, “tax yourself with Ramsay’s crimes. They were his and only his and what you did had no part in them.” She held up her hand, forestalling Theon’s words. “Winterfell was doomed before you took it. You had twenty men and snatched it. It was defended by a ten year old and a man who did not think to keep it safe when Torrhen’s Square was besieged. You probably beat Ramsay taking Winterfell by a month at most; if I am generous and assume that Roose Bolton had not already decided to betray Robb by then, imagine still what Winterfell would have looked like to Ramsay Snow. Domeric was dead and his father needed an heir; if Ramsay gave Winterfell to Roose on a platter, unasked, then being made Ramsay Bolton would have seemed within reach. It wasn’t you that gave Winterfell to Ramsay; Robb made the choice to leave it undefended and lost it.”

“I still should never have,” said Theon and stopped, unable to finish the sentence.

“But you did,” said Sansa bluntly. “And it is done and ended and you would not do it again. Ramsay would have taken Winterfell at some point. Before or after Robb died, I do not know, but he would have taken it. And he wouldn’t have had you,” said Sansa. “He’d have had Bran and Rickon. For as long as he wanted. And I wouldn’t have had anyone to save me, Theon. He’d probably still have Winterfell and he would probably still have me. Or as much of me as would be left by now. Before the dead got to us, anyway.”

Theon stared at Sansa, his face suddenly ashen. Yara, who knew that look, turned to Sansa. “Have you got a bucket? A bowl? Something like that?”

Sansa looked around her and grabbed a large wooden bowl, filled with carved fruit, something Catelyn had brought up from Riverrun, she suspected. She tipped the carved fruit out and handed Yara the bowl.

Yara got it to Theon just in time, and she soothed his hair back from his face as he bent forward and vomited what was left of his dinner into the bowl she’d put on his lap. Gently she patted between his shoulders as they heaved, whether in nausea or suppressed sobs, it was hard to tell.

“He always fucking hates it,” Yara said to Sansa across Theon’s bowed head. “They’re always the worst nightmares - that he’s watching someone else go through what the Bolton bastard did to him and can’t stop him.” She paused for a moment, wondering if she should say the next bit, but Yara was fairly certain Sansa already knew. “The ones with you are the worst.”

“I know,” said Sansa, gently. “He tried so hard to tell me, to stop me from doing anything that would make Ramsay… hurt me in other ways.” Sansa’s voice was very soft as she said, “I’m sorry I made you think of that, Theon,” said Sansa. “But it’s the truth. Robb would have lost Winterfell whether it was you that took it or Ramsay. He made a terrible mistake leaving it the way that he did and that’s why I need to make sure that my bannermen know the value of our alliance. I need them to answer my call if something like House Bolton rises again. I need to let them know what this alliance offers.”

Yara shrugged, her hands still wrapped around Theon’s bowed shoulders. “I can offer you a brother,” she said, lightly. “He’s a bit broken, but he’s still proven quite useful.”

“A trade route,” said Theon, not raising his head. He cleared his throat and spat the taste out of his mouth into the bowl and then gratefully took the tankard Yara offered him and took a long drink of water. “Not reliant on the Kingsroad and the south to let the North’s goods through. Essos needs timber. The Iron Islands need timber, for that matter. And if there’s anyone left alive in King’s Landing by the time this war is done they’ll need it as well. There will barely be a ship left in the world at the rate they’re going to the bottom of the sea. If we start building now, we can get enough ships to run most of the trade around Westeros for years, while everyone else tries to catch up. With preferential rates for the North, as part of the alliance. The North provides the timber, the Iron Islands provides the transport.“

“They’ll be tired of war,” said Yara. “Everyone’s tired of this fucking war. Everyone just wants to go home and stop fucking dying.”

“So you bring home those from the North,” said Sansa. “Even getting them from King’s Landing to White Harbour will cut down the travel time for those from the North.”

“And then take timber and stone back. The south will need to rebuild. Fuck, everyone needs to rebuild.” Theon ran his hand through his hair. “And with the White Walkers dead, there’s beyond the Wall. Sansa can treat with the wildlings, see if they’ll trade. Find someone with the right skills to take over Last Hearth and they could run the trade. Or Bear Island. Longships can transport it all far faster than moving it by road.” He looked up, to find Yara and Sansa both looking at him speculatively. Theon shrugged uncomfortably, looked away from them both. “I like to think about… how to make the world a better place. It stops me thinking about… other things.” His mouth quirked in a strange, self-deprecating half-smile.

“And the Iron Islands?” asked Yara. “Have you fixed those for me?”

“Stop them being kings on their own ships,” replied Theon, quietly. “The captains get everything and the only thing the crews get is the chance to rape women sometimes. Give the crews something else worth having. Your _people_ something else worth having. Some captains will hate you for it, but do away with the reaving and raping and the crew having their tongues ripped out and their ears cut off. Give those captains who agree preference for trade and make them share the gold with their crew. We do not sow, Yara, because there’s nowhere _to_ sow on the Iron Islands. We used to be good enough that no-one could ever defeat us at sea. But it isn’t that world any more. The Ironborn would starve to death in less than a year if Westeros put us to siege. We need to find other ways to live than raiding because the other kingdoms won’t put up with it for much longer. But if we trade… Trading needs trust, as much as an alliance does. And trading brings more gold than reaving.”

Yara stared at Theon for some time and finally took a drink from her tankard, thinking over what he said. “I told Ellaria you were my adviser,” she said. “I didn’t realise you’d taken that quite so much to heart.”

“I mean it, Yara,” replied Theon. “When I say I need to think about other things. If I don’t… then I’m just that ratshit pretender. And I promised _I’d_ be with you. Not him.”

For a moment, Yara was back in that whorehouse in Volantis, finding Theon Greyjoy again in the wreck that had escaped from Ramsay Bolton, and the smile she gave him was as tender as it had been then. “And what do I do with the captains who don’t agree with this? I’ve thought of all the things you say now, because I can see no other way that we can move away from the Old Ways. But what do I do with the captains who would keep reaving, no matter what their Queen decrees?”

“Take their ships, and take their crew away from them and burn their ships and those captains down to the waterline,” replied Theon, his voice hard. “You are our Queen. Let there be a reason to be Queen. If they make you pay the Iron Price for it, better them than their crew. And better them than some poor fucking fisherfolk trying to make their living on The Stony Shore.”

Yara looked over Theon to Sansa, who nodded firmly. “House Bolton and House Frey brought their own doom upon them,” she said. “I erased House Bolton and I will not allow House Frey to rise again. If you have captains who choose to defy their Queen, then I would not judge you ill for doing what Theon says. These games we highborn folk play for power kill our people and I am done with that. I do what is needed to keep the North safe. From its own northern Lords if that is what my people need.”

“I worried,” said Yara, and suddenly realised that she would not say this to anyone other than Theon and Sansa, “that I could be too ruthless. That wanting to end those who chose Euron again and again was not the right way to be Queen. That I could find another way.”

Theon and Sansa exchanged a glance. “A Lord who murders and tortures his own people is… he can never be trusted,” said Sansa. “There is justice meted out by Lords and then there is murder. Lords who murder their own people deserve to be ended.”

“As with captains,” added Theon. “Give them the choice. Give them more than one chance, if you will. But they have had time to see the folly that is Euron’s way - the Old Ways - and if they will not change, then give their crews justice.”

“This is, of course,” said Yara, “presuming that we win this fucking war.”

Theon gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Well, we won’t have a lot of choices if we lose.”

“Find the fastest fucking ship we can and sail for the horizon?” said Yara.

“Can you imagine how much Euron wants to murder us?” replied Theon, and grinned suddenly. 

“Nearly as much as Cersei wants to murder Sansa, I’d think,” replied Yara. “I’m sure Theon will find a way to fit you in his cabin, if we need to bolt.” She raised her tankard towards Sansa, who looked from one to the other of them and finally shook her head.

“Do all Ironborn men behave like Euron does?” asked Sansa.

Yara tilted her head, shrugged. “Most of them. If you let them get away with it. Until I find a way to change them.”

“I can see why you prefer women, then,” replied Sansa dryly and Yara laughed.

“I _like_ her,” she told Theon.

“Believe me, I’m aware of exactly how lucky I am,” replied Theon.

“But it’s not just if we lose,” said Sansa. “Not for the North.”

“Dany,” said Yara.

Theon gave her a sideways look. “Dany?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

Yara shrugged. “It’s not like you were up for much socialising in Meereen. Once you’d gone off to mope in your rooms, why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to get to know the Dragon Queen better?”

Theon snorted, genuinely amused, but sobered when he looked at Sansa. “You know we’ve bent the knee to her, Sansa. Yara’s… familiarity with her doesn’t change our plans for an alliance with the North.”

Sansa shrugged. “Nor does the fact that Jon’s still in love with her. He’s still my brother, despite the fact that he... isn’t. He bent the knee for that, no matter what I thought of it. No matter what the North thought of it.”

“No matter the fact that he’s fucking his aunt,” observed Yara. She raised her hands submissively as Sansa flashed a glare at her. “I swore an oath to never say that fact to anyone outside this room,” she agreed. “But currently we’re in this room.”

“She frightens me,” said Sansa, and her voice was suddenly quiet. “I know that you see the best in her, both of you. Believe in her wanting to be a better Queen, to make this world a better place. But I see her dragons and I see… I see a threat. Not a promise. She holds them on a leash… she holds herself on a leash. But she has burned so many in Essos. We saw what that turned dragon did to an army, right in front of Winterfell. I fear that if the North does not want to bend the knee then she will turn them on us.”

“She has promised us our independence,” said Theon, quietly. “We did not demand. We asked. And she agreed.”

“But you bent the knee,” Sansa pointed out.

“As Jon has,” replied Yara. “Your King in the North.”

“I do not know if that will hold for the other northern Lords. I do not know if it will hold for another Targaryen on the Iron Throne,” said Sansa. She looked down at her hands. “Maybe I see too many monsters.”

“Or maybe you see the monsters clearly,” replied Theon. “I do not discount your fears, Sansa. Or your judgement. But the war has to end yet.”

“I know,” said Sansa, but she could not stop the shudder that ran through her. “It will not be long. It’s running to an end now. The Red Keep cannot hold much longer. Cersei and Euron will have to win or die in the next few months at most.”

“We will find a way through,” said Yara. “I don’t know how we will find that way, but we have survived so far, no matter what the world has thrown at each of us. We will find a way to make peace under the Dragon Queen, if that’s what it comes to.”

“I won’t fight in a war against Sansa,” Theon said, his voice very quiet. “No more than I would fight in a war against you.”

“Then best we not start a war against each other, little brother,” replied Yara and laughed. “Just make sure you keep both of us happy and the situation should never arise.”

“Thank you, my Queen,” said Theon, dryly. “I shall take your marital advice seriously.”

“I’m always open to providing advice, little brother,” said Yara. “There’s some things I’m sure I could be very informative about.”

“The fact that we’re going to be living a long way apart suddenly doesn’t seem quite such a burden if I can live without hearing your informative advice,” replied Theon and was relieved to hear Sansa laugh. 

“There’s always ravens,” said Sansa. “Or couriers. If I find I need to call on your advice, Queen Yara. If things become less than… blissful.”

“Blissful?” Yara arched an eyebrow at Sansa.

The flush that climbed from the neck of Sansa’s gown was slight but definite, but Sansa’s voice was as steady as her gaze on Yara. “Your brother pleases me, Queen Yara. In all the ways a husband should please his wife.”

Theon shrugged at Yara’s look. “I don’t deserve her. But somehow she finds me worthy.”

“You deserve a great deal more than you think,” replied Yara, but did not press the point. “I thought there could be fostering,” she said, returning to their original topic of conversation. “Being a Stark ward fucked Theon up good and proper, but a proper fostering system could work. One that doesn’t involve the threat of being murdered if your father fucks up again.”

“My father would never have murdered Theon,” declared Sansa hotly. 

“Even if Robert Baratheon had asked? If it had been the honourable thing to do?” replied Yara. ‘Don’t answer.” She shook her head as Sansa opened her mouth. “They’re old fights and I’m not going to fight them with you, and he _won’t_ fight them with you.” She nodded at Theon. “But when the war ends. Maybe a few months each way. Northern children come to the Iron Islands, our children come to you. We need to learn new ways, be less… trapped... in our small, cold, really fucking windy world.”

“I would like that,” said Sansa. “I am pleased with the honour that you give my House, to trust us to keep your children safe.”

“It will help me move the Ironborn away from the Old Ways, if their children have friends from beyond the Islands,” replied Yara. “And you’re doing me a favour taking Theon away, so keeping your children safe is the least price I could pay.”

“A favour?” asked Sansa. “I thought you would want to take him as your Hand.”

“I am the last male heir to Balon Greyjoy,” responded Theon.

“And the old men think that’s worth more than any Queen,” said Yara. “If I start changing our ways, Theon would be where they would turn.”

“I want that no more than Yara does,” said Theon. “If I’m in Winterfell, married to a northern Lady, they won’t be able to use me to gather opposition to Yara. Even my name would be worthless to them.”

“You’ll have to renounce all titles and lands in the Iron Islands as part of this marriage,” said Yara. “The Greyjoy line would continue through my line, not yours.”

“And you would have to renounce any claim to titles here in Winterfell,” said Sansa. “Renounce any claim to inherit Winterfell if I die before you. You could never be Lord of Winterfell. You know the northern Lords wouldn’t stand for it. You could stay Lord Theon, but it would be - a courtesy title only. You would be consort, not my Lord.”

“They’ll call you Lady Sansa’s wife,” said Yara, knowing how that would once have made Theon boil with rage, testing what effect it would have on him now.

“They can call me Lady Sansa’s handmaiden, for all I care,” replied Theon. “It doesn’t matter, as long as they know that I am Sansa’s. I have no need to own lands or inherit titles. And I have no need to rule.”

“I know,” said Sansa. She tilted her head, contemplating his face for a moment. “You would do it well, though, Theon.”

“Aye,” said Yara, quietly and ignored the look Theon flashed at her, a mix of disbelief, memories and despair. “You’re not what you were. You’ve learned. You’d be a good Lord now. A good King.”

“But you would both be better Queens than I a King,” he responded.

Yara snorted into her tankard. “Of course we would be,” she said and grinned sharply at her brother. “We have to be. The world shouldn’t be that way, but so it fucking is.” 

“Ten times better?” Theon replied.

“You were listening,” grinned Yara. “Yes, we’ve got to be ten times better than a man to be considered a good ruler. Fortunately, it isn’t fucking hard.” She snorted suddenly. “I’ve just got to be better than Euron, and all I need to do that is not send the whole fucking population of the Iron Islands to the Drowned God’s halls.” She stopped for a moment, contemplating both Sansa and Theon. “What do you do, though?” she asked Sansa. “If they come after Theon, anyway. There may be some northern Lords who would think to try and murder my brother so they can take his place beside you. Some who may wish to rule. And make their own heirs to Winterfell.”

“He nearly killed the Night King,” said Sansa, suddenly steely. “If they’re foolish enough to come after the Hero of the Godswood, I will personally hand him his bow and quiver and set his arrows on fire. I have no interest in a fair fight for my hand. I have an interest in keeping Theon alive. And I am _no-one’s_ broodmare.”

Yara tipped her tankard upwards in a small toast to Sansa. “I _really_ see why you like her,” she said to Theon.

“I would say my taste in women has improved but I think that could get me into trouble,” he responded and Yara laughed.

Sansa raised an eyebrow at Theon. “I’m missing something?” she asked.

Theon shrugged helplessly. “She is my Queen,” he said.

“Which means,” said Yara, “he’s determined not to shame me in public. Of course, the opposite doesn’t apply, so I can let you know that the first time I met our boy since he was all grown up, he didn’t realise I was his sister for a while. Not until he’d spent quite a lot of time trying to get his hands down my pants.”

“I’d like to point out,” said Theon, his cheeks reddening, “that I did stop trying to get my hands in your pants as soon as I found out you were my sister.”

“You were really fucking shitty about it, if I remember correctly,” replied Yara. “And yes, you never would have tried if you’d known I was your big bad sister. Which is more than can be said for Jaime Lannister,” conceded Yara.

“Or Jon Snow,” added Sansa.

“Whoever would have imagined the day would come when House Greyjoy held the moral high ground?” said Yara. “In matters of fucking, anyway.”

Sansa smiled. “The world has turned quite on its head lately, Queen Yara.”

“Well,” said Theon into the small silence, “now that we’ve proven it isn’t possible for me to die of embarrassment, no matter how much I might want to, can we talk about something else?”

Sansa smiled at Theon, “Queen Yara, may I have your permission to kiss my betrothed?”

“Be my guest,” responded Yara, grinning. 

Theon looked down at his lap, at the bowl that still resided there, and hastily set it on the floor as Sansa approached him. He tilted his head up and Sansa leaned down and kissed him gently, the softest press of lips. “My Lord,” she said and straightened up, her hand resting lightly upon the back of his neck. He leaned sideways, resting his head against the firm material of her bodice, his eyes closed for a second as Sansa curled her fingers through his hair. When he opened them, Yara was looking at him, her expression unusually soft. 

“It really is, isn’t it?” Yara said, half a question, half a statement.

“It really is,” Theon responded, not moving.

Sansa raised an eyebrow in question at Yara, who pointed her tankard at Theon. “It really is love. He got angry at you. He _shouted_ at you. My little brother doesn’t get angry at anything these days. Not that he ever lets anyone see. Not to say he won’t fight for me, but he’s never fucking angry. I managed to get him to put his tankard down in a slightly shitty way once and other than that, it’s all “my Queen” and “it doesn’t matter”. He must trust you absolutely if he’s willing to get angry at you.”

“As I do him,” replied Sansa, softly. “The best decision I made in my life was putting it in Theon’s hands. It was true the day we jumped off the walls of Winterfell and it’s been true every day since.”

“I still don’t know what I did to deserve you,” replied Theon.

“You would have gone back to him. To save me.” Sansa’s fingers curled for a moment again in Theon’s hair, possessive and loving and, for only a moment, desperate with the thought of what could have been lost to her if Brienne and Podrick had not arrived in time. She looked at Yara then. “It really is love,” she said. “You’re right.” 

“He’ll work it out one day,” replied Yara. “Once you’re an old married couple maybe. And if he doesn’t work out, you can always let me know if you’ve developed a taste for Greyjoys and we’ll see if we can work out another kind of alliance.”

“Yara!” objected Theon loudly, with a groan.

“Got you to shout at me, little brother,’ Yara said and laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some plot happens. Bit by bit I get there!
> 
> TW here: some discussion of abusive relationships/coercive control follows.
> 
> So this is the first mention by Yara of the fact that the Theon/Stark ward relationship is pretty much a textbook definition of a coercive control/abusive relationship. I have no idea if that will turn up again (it’s not like Westeros gets this stuff and Yara’s therapy consists of making Theon drink ale) but honestly, I could write essays on it.
> 
> For various professional reasons, I am aware of issues of coercive control. And when the definitions include “isolating a person from their family, controlling their movements, monitoring their communication, taking control of their daily life, threats to harm, threats to kill” you can see Theon’s life as a Stark ward writ large. From his time as a fretful baby (which is common among children born from an abused mother, who spend pregnancy bathing their children in stress hormones) to the physical, verbal and emotional abuse provided by his father and brothers, to the (almost certainly unintentional) coercive control enacted by the Starks to their ward, it is hardly surprising Theon makes terrible decisions with the hope that he can gain some affection. The closest Yara ever gets to breaking through to Theon in Winterfell is when she stops taunting him and shows him some love. 
> 
> Balanced by the fact that it is only post-Ramsay, when Theon’s personality has been obliterated, that he has a chance to rebuild himself. His time with Yara is genuinely the first time Theon has any autonomy over his own life, and certainly the first time he has autonomy within a loving and supportive relationship with a sister who offers him unconditional love. Which explains a lot of post-all-the-terrible-things Theon, and why he can make such different choices from pre-Ramsay Theon. 
> 
> Anyway! That is all probably way too deep for my soft and delightful exploration of all the ways Sansa and Theon can spend years making each other happy. I may write some standalone stories that explore some of that, if I feel like heading down that path. It certainly doesn’t mean I hate the Starks for their treatment of Theon. In this case, coercive control is almost certainly unintentional. But that doesn’t, to me, change the fact that it IS coercive control and that does have a huge role to play in Theon’s choices and increases my fascination for the character. It’s also a credit to the writers of GoT, who scatter these facets of Theon’s life as a child who suffers from a succession of abusive/controlling relationships into a few minutes each episode. 
> 
> So, er, well, yes. Sorry, that was a bit deeper than I was expecting these notes to be. But I guess it’s the terrible shadows that underpin Sansa and Theon that make writing them in bright sunshine and happiness so fascinating.


	14. The Past Informs The Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winterfell stank of Boltons.

Winterfell stank of Boltons. 

Not just metaphorically, with the Flayed Man banners and sigils being found in all sorts of unexpected places, Ramsay’s correspondence handed to her by one of the more sensible Knights of the Vale after he’d found it, their armour and weaponry already being recast and repurposed. 

Not just metaphorically, with maids who trembled and could not stop silently weeping in relief at the end of a long terror, tears dripping from their chins as they helped clear the halls and rooms and heap Bolton linens in a pile, to be used as fuel for the pyres. Scullery boys with not enough fingers cowered and cringed and then straightened and whispered, “the North remembers” as she passed them, finding themselves again now that Ramsay was no longer there to play his games with them. 

It literally stank of Boltons, the great heaped pile of the dead in the field outside Winterfell, Bolton and Wildling and Northmen being slowly untangled and sorted into piles, as the men who could gathered wood to burn them later. Rickon had already been buried in the crypt; it was cold in Winterfell but not cold enough to delay any disposition of the dead.

It literally stank of Boltons when Sansa found Ramsay’s trophy room, Jon at her back. He had tried to shield her from it, although she had already seen the worst of it when she’d walked in. She hadn’t spoken at all, and in the end Jon had yielded beneath her steely gaze, stepping back as she walked into the room, looking at Ramsay’s trophies. “Send me the Maester,” she’d said, and her hand didn’t even tremble as she reached out and gently touched the skin that was pinned upon the wall. “I believe this is Lord Cerwyn. I want to send whatever remains we can identify back to their families.” Jon himself had gone to fetch the Maester, but she had felt how quickly he had run away from what Ramsay had done to the North. She loved Jon, and he was brave, but when it came to Ramsay Bolton, he knew nothing. 

Maester Wolkan hadn’t been able to identify everything, and some pieces would go the pyre unknown, but Lord and Lady Cerwyn’s skins were taken down and placed inside a metal box, to be given to Cley Cerwyn when he arrived. At least they could go to the Cerwyn crypts; Sansa hoped it would bring the new Lord some comfort. There were Ironborn remains there as well, that Wolkan suspected had come from Moat Cailin and Sansa put them aside to go to the sea.

There were a number of boxes, most carved with sigils of a number of Northern houses and, opening them, Sansa found finger bones and toe bones and in some cases hands and in some cases, far worse things. She would not send those things back; no families needed to know what had been done to their children in those cases. They would go to the pyres.

She kept the last box to herself, not letting the Maester near it. It was plain iron, but a golden kraken was chased upon its surface, far more ornate and polished than any of the others. She took it to the Godswood in the end, where she could be alone. For a long time she sat beneath the weirwood tree, stroking the box gently, gathering the courage to open it. 

Sansa was not surprised by the contents in the end. A fingerbone, strips of cured skin, a kraken clasp, small fragments of Theon that were obviously some of Ramsay’s most treasured possessions. Sansa stared at the contents of the box for some time, dry-eyed. Finally she closed it. 

Theon did not need to see it, she knew. Did not need to know how much Ramsay had treasured his Ironborn prince, how much he had enjoyed the breaking of him. She would make sure the box and its contents went to the sea, anonymous.  

Sansa was tired by the time she got back to her room, concealed the box within one of her dressing chests, buried deep. Bone-tired but restless, feeling like ants crawled over her skin from having seen again what Ramsay was. What would have become of her, if she had not taken Theon’s hand that day. What had been Theon’s life for… how long? How many years had he been Ramsay’s pet? Ramsay’s toy? Ramsay’s favourite broken thing? She didn’t dare to add it up because she could not stand the thought of it.

In the end, unable to sleep, unable to rest, she left her rooms, paced the halls of Winterfell. She had no conscious plan to go there, but she was not entirely surprised to find herself at the entrance to the kennels again. 

They had used archers to kill Ramsay’s hounds. They were loose in their cages and no-one was willing to go near them, particularly when they saw what was left of Ramsay’s corpse. So the hounds had been shot and their bodies dragged out to the pyres, to burn with the Bolton men. Sansa did not know what Jon had ordered done with Ramsay’s body. She did not care, but she knew that whatever happened to it, no honour had been accorded to the corpse.

And so she walked into the dark, empty space, the cage doors all swinging open now. If Jon had been there, she suspected he would think she would go back to where she had Ramsay killed. To gloat, mayhaps.

She did not go there. Instead her steps took her to the last cage on the left, the door open as she had opened it that day, and she remembered, as clearly as if it was now, seeing Theon for the first time since she had left for King’s Landing. Half-starved and freezing, utterly broken and yet still with enough scraps of his fierce Ironborn pride to hide his mutilated hand from her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he had said, his voice rough with disuse.

She had thought, at the time, that he was saying it out of shame, to drive her away from him. She thought differently now.

So many people had known. Roose. The Bolton men. The servants. Myranda. Littlefinger. But the only one who had tried to warn her that Ramsay was a monster had been Theon. 

“You were right,” she whispered to the ghost of Theon, the ghost of Reek-that-was. “I shouldn’t have been there. You were the only one who tried to tell me.”

She blamed herself as well. She should have asked herself why Theon was so broken, what had made him into Reek, had broken the boy she’d remembered who’d been so proud, and so fierce, salt and stone and steel. She hadn’t liked that boy, and she had hated him when she thought he had killed Bran and Rickon, knew he had betrayed Robb, but she should have known that breaking him would not have been a quick or easy task. But she had been so pleased that he had been punished that she hadn’t thought of what Reek had meant for her.

She had learned.

She did not believe in gods anymore. King’s Landing had done with that. Petyr Baelish had done with that. Ramsay Bolton had done with that. But still she sent a prayer out to any god that might hear her; the Drowned God perhaps, looking after his lost prince. “Let him be well,” she prayed.

She had heard of what had happened at the Kingsmoot, from Baelish, knew that Theon and Yara had fled across the Narrow Sea with most of the Iron Fleet. She hoped the Drowned God heard her. Theon didn’t deserve that. Not again so soon. Not after he had gone home at last.

She wished he was here, not gone from her side. Ramsay Bolton was gone, but defeating him had meant placing herself back in debt to another monster. Baelish didn’t relish others pain like Ramsay did, but he would kill the world to put himself upon the Iron Throne and that made him just as dangerous a man.

More dangerous. He was too smooth, too calculated, too pleasant. It was so easy for men (it was always men) to fail to recognise what Baelish wanted, what he would do, who he would make pay, to get it.

“You would know,” Sansa whispered. “You learned to see the monsters, too.”

Jon – Jon trusted too much. Davos trusted too much. Tormund trusted too much. None of them saw what Sansa saw.

Theon would have seen it. She would have had an ally in her fight.

Not just an ally.

He had offered himself back to Ramsay for her.

He wouldn’t just have given his life to save her. He would have let himself be Reek again.

Sansa shuddered at the thought of what trophies Ramsay would have put in his pretty box if Brienne had not come.

She wanted to tell him Ramsay was dead. That she had killed him, fed him to his dogs. For the North, for the living she had killed him. But more than that, she had killed Ramsay for herself and for Theon.

She wanted to tell him that he need never be Reek again.

“Let me see him again,” she prayed, to whichever gods would hear her, wanting it with such intensity that she had to grasp the sill of the door to stop her knees from buckling. 

If any gods were listening, they did not deign to let her know they’d heard her prayer.

Sansa took a deep breath, straightened up, brushed away the few bits of straw that clung to her skirt, made her way back out of the kennels. 

There was a dead giant in the courtyard and she had to organise to get him moved to the pyre.

And then she had a monster to slay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m continuing my way through my watch of GoT and last night I watched Battle of the Bastards and basically Holy Motherfucking Shitballs! Sansa Stark, ice queen of my heart and my world. What an episode.
> 
> And at 2.50am, I woke up and decided that this needed to be written and also fit into the Gifts timeline. Which I was pleased about as I’m a bit stuck plotwise until I finish watching the series!


	15. A Gift From The North

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa?” he asked, his voice tentative but he had to ask, he had to know, “Is she alright?”

Jon Snow was standing on the shore.

Theon had not paid attention to who was there as they had brought the tender ashore, in the rush of jumping overboard and dragging it far enough ashore that it wouldn’t float off in the tide. It was only as he felt the boat settle heavily into the sand and could finally turn his attention to the shore that he realised that it was not Daenerys or one of her people waiting for him.

He saw the shape of the Northern armour first, unexpected, and then the direwolves wrought on the cuirass and finally a face he had not seen for, gods, how many years now. Darker, bearded, scarred, but utterly familiar.

Jon looked as shocked as Theon felt, stepping slowly forwards, his expression modulating from shock to anger with each step.

He stopped and Theon found his voice. “Jon,” he said, half a question. “I didn’t know you were here.”

For a moment his mind flooded with a hundred thoughts, everything he should say or do to explain himself, to ask what Jon was doing here, where Daenerys was, what was happening, apologies, even the thought that Jon was in armour and Theon had neither armour nor sword.

But only one question mattered.

He stepped towards Jon, slowly, carefully. “S… Sansa?” he asked, his voice tentative but he had to ask, he had to know, “Is she alright?”

He almost expected it, but still he cringed as Jon lunged forward, gripped his gambeson, pulled him close. Theon lowered his head as Jon ground out, “What you did for her... is the only reason I’m not killing you.”

There was no defence. None that he wanted to make. Theon had not lied when he’d told Sansa that he did not want forgiveness. He could never be forgiven. He could never make amends. And so he kept his head bowed to Jon and his rightful anger.

And then another man, an older man, spoke and Jon was letting him go and the Queen… the Queen was gone.

*****

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

Theon didn’t know why Missandei had allowed Jon and Ser… Davos(?) to join in the meeting in the audience room, but it was not his place to say yea or nay. There had been no news from the North when he had left with Yara and Ellaria for Dorne, no time for news since they had arrived from Meereen and taken over the abandoned Dragonstone and started the ill-fated attempts to gather the armies of Dorne and Highgarden.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

Jon Snow was King in the North. Winterfell had been cleansed of Boltons. The Knights of the Vale were involved somehow (Jon had been vague on that point) and the wildlings and there was a giant who died in Winterfell’s courtyard.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

_Ramsay Bolton was dead._

There was a noise in Theon’s head like the sound of a gale through rigging in a running sea, when the wind was all that existed and you could think of nothing else. Everything inside of him was frozen, an empty space, an absence, a null.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

And after some words that he heard and did not hear (that they would wait for Queen Daenerys to return and determine the course of action then, and there was talk of the dead and dragonglass and _Ramsay Bolton was dead_ ), the meeting broke up and moved around him and Theon remained in his chair, utterly still.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

Until he realised that everyone was going and he was still there and he looked up and he was the only person seated and Jon was about to exit the room.

And he had to know. No matter what Jon thought of him, Theon had to know.

“Jon?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Jon didn’t turn back to face him, would not look at Theon. But he stopped in the doorway for a moment, his broad shoulders and armour filling it.

“She’s well,” he said softly.

There was a long pause, neither of them speaking, then Jon continued, “She’s the Lady of Winterfell,” and then he was gone.

The Lady of Winterfell.

She had been the Lady of Winterfell. In name. Lady Bolton. In name.

A prisoner. A slave. An owned thing. In reality.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

And she was the Lady of Winterfell.

He had not failed her.

Theon breathed deeply, let it out in a long sigh.

He had done a good thing. A shining thing. A moment when he had made the right choice and had not failed. There had been no other. Even saving Bran from the wildlings had been tainted forever by Robb’s reaction, Robb’s anger, Robb’s harsh words.

But Theon Greyjoy had saved Sansa Stark.

“Thank you,” he whispered to the empty space where Jon had been.

Ramsay Bolton was dead.

It was too large a thing. He could not stretch his mind around it, his feelings around it, could not make it fit within the story of his life.

Sansa… Sansa was the only one that understood the shape of it, the weight of it. She had found the wreckage of Theon Greyjoy within Reek, found the capacity within him to make the right choice, to do the right thing. She understood the ways that Ramsay could distort the shape of your life, alter the course of it, make you into nothing but a creature that would gnaw away parts of itself to try and escape the relentless pain and terror.

He wanted to talk to her, to see if she could help him make sense of the whole of it. Make sense of Theon Greyjoy in a world where Ramsay Bolton was dead.

“Let me see her again.” He sent his prayer to the Drowned God, to her gods, old and new.

Then he closed the door in his mind, put away his feelings, put away everything from that part of his life that he could not yet understand.

Except, for a moment, just a moment, he felt a hand in his, the shape of it turning as he asked her to trust him, to fall with him, to fly with him, and he felt her fingers close tight around his, holding him, putting her life into his keeping.

He had not failed her.

Theon took a deep breath, thought about what would come when Daenerys returned.

He would find a way to save Yara.

No matter what it took.

He would save Yara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess you can all work out where I’m up to in my viewing (have just finished s7e05, just to check that they didn’t have this scene). But watching the Jon/Theon reunion all I could think of was what Theon would feel when he found out Ramsay was dead. And that Sansa wasn’t. 
> 
> Have also discovered that dragons have the largest, slowest turning circles of any weapons excluding, perhaps, Super Star Destroyers.


	16. Littlefinger’s Last Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Like kissing,” breathed Theon. “You thought it might feel as good as kissing. After Ramsay. And you were willing to try.” He shook his head, then cupped Sansa’s face within his hands. “Sansa Stark, you are the bravest woman in all of Westeros. The best and bravest and strongest woman I have ever met.”
> 
> “Theon,” she said and her eyes shone with tears. “Thank you,” she said and nestled her head into his chest, let him stroke her hair. Finally, with a sniff, she sat back. “It’s a lot better than kissing,” she said and Theon gave a sudden laugh, and Sansa echoed it, a slightly teary sound.
> 
> (CW: There be smut ahead. But also discussion of past previous sexual assault and PTSD symptoms. Sex and trauma, intertwined as ever for Theon and Sansa.)

She is curled on her side, Theon behind her, his mouth roaming across her hair, her neck, her shoulders, as if he cannot get enough of the taste of her. His body fits the curve of hers, the full length of them touching from shoulder to toes. He pulls her right hip back towards him tilting her body slightly back, then grips her knee and slides her right thigh back and over his legs, opening her to him. He slides one hand between them and under her thigh, fingers dipping and curling and flexing inside of her heated wetness, the other hand over her thigh, so he can roll his thumb and fingers over her pearl. Not the slow, heavy strokes that bring her so reliably to her peak, but softer, gentler, slower again, a coaxing of her body towards ecstasy.

Sansa wonders if this is what drowning feels like, like waves rolling against the edges of her skin, unable to catch her breath, short desperate gulps of air, ragged and stuttering, her ears filled with the sound of her heartbeat like rushing water.

He is saying “I love you, I love you, I love you,” against her body, tattooing it into her skin with his mouth, indelible marks of the fact that she is his and he is hers, and she would proudly show the world those tattoos, his kraken marks against her skin.

And she peaks and it is like nothing she has ever felt before, not a climb and a fall, but the ocean washing over her and through her, wave upon wave through her veins and her breath fails her, her ears fail her and she thinks for a moment that she could die from this, staring into the blackness of her closed eyes as lightning jags across her vision. She rides the waves for what feels like forever and when they end she finds her face is stained with tears she doesn’t recall shedding.

His thumb-strokes over her pearl are feather-light, but when her thigh muscle twitches beneath his hand, because it is too much now, he slides his fingers out of her quim, his thumb away from her pearl. Sansa makes a small noise, an almost-protest against the loss of the feeling of fullness. She feels his smile against her shoulder, as he lifts her thigh back, so she can curl into herself again. When he has dried his hands against the sheets, he coaxes her onto her back, and she gazes at him, inexplicably finding herself crying, unable to stop. 

He kisses her cheeks, the tracks of her tears, the small salty pools that have gathered at the corner of her mouth. “You taste like the sea,” he says and she clutches him to her, holding him tightly.

“I missed you,” Sansa says.

“I know,” he replies.

They have been circumspect while Yara was visiting. Winterfell knew they spent their nights together, Sansa was certain, and Yara certainly did. But her visit had felt like bringing the real world back into the safe place they had found for themselves, and both she and Theon had agreed that they could wait until Yara went home before sharing a bed again. Sansa was fairly certain Yara had told Theon that they were being stupid and she would hardly mind, but it was what they had chosen. There had only been that first day before the feast when Sansa had felt wanton, unable to wait to feel Theon again.

Sansa had thought back over her life prior to that day and was sure that she had never previously felt anything that could be described as wanton. Instead her self-control (self-preservation, perhaps) had ratcheted up with every step forward she had taken since she had left for King’s Landing, until she was ice and polished steel. 

Theon was the only thing in her life she could be soft with, be safe with. He had seen her at her lowest, as she had him, and somehow that meant that she trusted him utterly. 

Enough, sometimes, to let go of control, and just be a young woman in love.

“Let me?” she says, half a question, her hand trailing down his chest, but he stops it with his own hand.

“In the morning,” he says, and she agrees and soon they settle into sleep, limbs entangled.

She returns the favour to him in the morning, waking him before anyone else but the first kitchen staff are awake, and the kitchens are far from their bedchambers.

She is curled behind him, against the length of him, as he was her, glad they are of a height. She kisses across his back, his shoulders, ignoring the mess of scars that she barely even sees now. They are soft kisses, though, and he only half-wakes, enough for him to know it is her and to answer yes, go on to her question. It is the press of her oiled fingers into him that wakes him fully, and the rock of her hips against his. “Sansa,” he groans into his pillow and she takes it as slowly as he did the night before, matching the curl and thrust of her fingers with the rock of his hips, the intakes of his breath, until he cannot stop himself saying, “please, please, please, oh Drowned God, please” and she finally drives harder and faster until his hips buck into the bed and “fuck, oh gods, fuuuck,” and he falls apart for her.

“Seven fucking hells, Sansa,” he says, as she slides her fingers out of him, and she can _hear_ him smirking into his pillow. “You certainly make waking up early worthwhile.”

“As you do staying up late,” she responds and laughs as he turns over and kisses her soundly, an exuberant, loving kiss. 

***

Sansa normally spent several hours after dinner meeting with Maesters or visitors to Winterfell or dealing with correspondence or managing the household affairs of the keep. It surprised Theon, therefore, when she rose from dinner and announced she planned to retire to bed immediately. 

It was with some trepidation that Theon knocked on Sansa’s door far earlier than he was used to, ready to return to his own chambers if she was feeling unwell or really, truly needed to rest. She opened the door to him, however, and drew him in and into her embrace with her usual tenderness, her lips soft on his. 

When she finally let him draw away, Theon raised a quizzical eyebrow at her and curiosity consumed him when she gave a small smile, the slightest blush dusting over her cheeks. She took his hand and led him to the bedchamber and sat him on the bed and then joined him, sitting cross-legged in front of him. She opened her mouth several times to say something and closed it again.

“Sansa,” said Theon, eventually, after she had tried again and failed to say anything. “Whatever it is, I’m here for you. But honestly, if you take much longer, you may kill me.” He raised an eyebrow and nodded solemnly, pressing a dramatic hand to his heart, when she looked at him and that made her laugh. 

It seemed to be what was needed to finally speak. “A package came,” she said. “A week or so ago.” Theon nodded encouragingly, as Sansa faltered again and she drew a deep breath, forged onwards. “Do you remember,” she said, “a long time ago… before Yara… before you went away… I mentioned knowing people through Lord Baelish?”

Theon looked at her, puzzled, trawling back through his memory to when Sansa had last talked to him of the late, unlamented Littlefinger. His brow cleared suddenly, then his eyes grew wide. “Oh,” said Theon. “Ohhhhhh.”

Sansa blushed again and ducked her head down and then caught hold of her courage. “I… sent instructions. From the Detailed Diagrams.”

“They _were_ very detailed,” replied Theon, and laughed suddenly. The Detailed Diagrams (as they had come to call them) had been, in certain areas, extremely specific. 

“I… haven’t been sure… what to do with it.” She drew in a deep breath. “Whether you wanted to see it. To try and… if I should try… it’s all…”

“Sansa,” said Theon softly, catching up her hands and drawing them to his mouth, pressing gentle kisses on each palm. “It’s alright. It’s just a thing. That’s all. We can look at it and if we decide to just put it away again, then that’s what we’ll do.” He smiled for her, trying (as he always tried) to lighten her heart. “I’m the Hero of the Godswood after all, who faced the Night King himself and killed - what am I up to now? - a thousand wights at least. I shouldn’t be frightened of a wooden cock, should I?”

Sansa actually managed to laugh at that and her hand cupped his cheek fondly. “Actually, it’s leather,” she said, with a hint of wickedness in her voice. 

“Well, doesn’t that sound fucking fancy?” grinned Theon. 

“The softest kid leather,” said Sansa, solemnly. “Apparently it makes it more… realistic.”

Theon smiled, a hint of wistfulness in his face, but he nodded. “Are you sure, Sansa?” he asked, one last time, wanting to be sure it was her usual inhibitions that had made her so inarticulate and not something deeper.

Sansa nodded. “I should…” she started and trailed off. 

“Should I get it?” Theon asked and she nodded. “Where have you put it?” He followed her pointing finger to one of her dressing chests, dug down to the bottom of it and unearthed the lightly wrapped package from the bottom of it. Taking it back to the bed he unwrapped it, put the wrappings aside, laid the object on the bed between them. 

The leather was quite dark and it was clearly and definitely a representation of a cock. An erect one, not ungenerously proportioned (though Theon may have had a small moment of thinking “not as big as mine” before that smug thought drained away into his current reality).

“Well,” he said, trying hard to make this light for Sansa, who was staring at it wide-eyed, almost but not quite frightened. “It’s definitely a cock.” He sighed suddenly, melancholy running through him. “I miss having one of those,” he said, unable to stop himself from a moment’s mourning for what had been taken from him.

“It’s…” Sansa reached out, the softest touch of her fingers on the back of his hand. “We don’t have to do anything with it. If it upsets you.”

Theon managed a twist of his lips that barely qualified as an attempt at a reassuring smile. “I can’t change anything, Sans,” he said, softly. “What’s gone is gone. I’ve had to live with that for a long time now and it’s… it is what it is.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sansa. “That you had to go through that. I can’t imagine… I wish… I wish… it hadn’t happened to you. Sometimes I wish…” she leaned back again, sighed. “I don’t know… that my parents had betrothed me to you instead of Joffrey, maybe. Maybe that would have saved us from… from…”

“Sansa,” said Theon, and waited until she looked at him. “From what you’ve told me, I’m fairly certain nearly _anything_ would have been better than Joffrey,” and his sarcastic drawl and rolled eyes were enough to make her laugh, “but I would have been a terrible husband to you. I was a stupid boy. Stupid and rude and thoughtless and I wouldn’t have known how to care about you. I didn’t… belong to anyone. Belong to anything. I didn’t know my place in the world.” He reached forward, touched her cheek gently, drew his finger softly down the length of it. “I betrayed your family, because I was trying so hard to find something to belong to, and there’s no knowing whether being married to you would have been enough to stop me doing that. Or I might have drowned you in needing to belong to… someone. I wasn’t Ramsay, I know, but I was… thoughtlessly cruel. I had to learn to be a better person before I could be a good husband to you.”

“You didn’t need what Ramsay did to you to learn that!” Sansa said, hotly. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“No,” said Theon. “No, I didn’t need what Ramsay did to me. But I survived him. I learned… I learned how useless cruelty is. That it gains you nothing. That cruelty isn’t something the strong do; it’s something the weak do. I had a lot of time to think, think about what I’d done, think about the choices I should have made. If I hadn’t been trying so hard to make people respect me because of my position, because of what I could threaten to do to them, but had tried to earn their respect instead.”

“You’ve earned that now, Theon,” said Sansa, earnestly. “I know you keep doubting it but people do respect you for what you’ve done for them. What you keep doing for them.”

Theon smiled wryly. “Well, maybe one day I’ll believe that,” he said and then sighed again, looking at the object that had started all of this. “I still miss my cock, though.”

“I know,” said Sansa, following his gaze, “I know… that what we have isn’t… usual. But…” she looked up at Theon, her expression anxious. “Is it good? I don’t know enough… Is what we have good?”

“Sansa,” replied Theon, passionately. “We deserve songs, Sansa. It’s beyond good. It’s beyond anything I ever thought I would feel again. I thought… I thought that part of my life was ended. That I could never feel… that again. But it’s not just… you gave me back a part of myself, Sansa. An important part. I know that it’s different and it’s not what other people might think is normal, but, Drowned God, if there’s anything spending time with Yara has taught me, it’s that there’s a lot of different ways to love.”

“And a lot of different things that people think are normal,” said Sansa, and suddenly her voice was hard. “Ramsay raped me every night, brought his knives and… other things to my bed, and that was normal. Accepted. _Usual_.” She poured scorn on that last word. 

“And the Mad King Aerys raped his sister-wife nightly and it was usual,” replied Theon. “But love is… love takes many forms, Sansa. Not all of them good - Cersei and Jaime Lannister love each other, but it is not a happy thing. And the gods only know what’s happening with Jon and Daenerys. But there’s Grey Worm and Missandei. There’s Yara. I mean,” Theon shrugged, “she’ll fuck any woman with a nice set of tits and won’t necessarily say no to a pretty boy, but she treats them all well. Not one of her bedmates will say a word against her. And Brienne told me that Renly Baratheon and Ser Loras were not just bedmates but seemed truly in love. If the Seven…”

“Wait? What?” Sansa interrupted. “Renly and… Ser Loras? Ser Loras Tyrell? The Knight Of Flowers, Ser Loras?”

“Yes, that Ser Loras,” said Theon and then glanced sharply at Sansa’s face. “You didn’t know? That they were bedmates?”

Sansa shook her head, eyes wide, biting her lip and then suddenly she began to laugh and couldn’t stop until, eventually, she slumped back into her pillows. “Ser Loras,” she burbled in delight. “Ser Loras!”

“What about Ser Loras?” asked Theon, helplessly, when Sansa’s laughs had finally subsided to hiccuping giggles.

“Because, because,” said Sansa and laughed again. “Oh gods, Margaery tried to marry me to him. Before Tyrion. They were trying… I’m sure it was Lady Olenna but… oh gods, Theon. I wanted to marry him _so much_. I was - he was young and handsome and a knight and he could fight and… that probably explains why he talked about what he’d wear as a groom… oh gods. I would have been _so disappointed_! When he couldn’t… I mean, maybe he could… I don’t. Oh gods, Theon. I don’t know how you survived me as a girl. I was… how naive can a girl be! _Ser Loras!_ ” she said and laughed again. 

“Well, I’m glad I entertained you,” replied Theon, wryly. 

“Let’s try,” said Sansa, suddenly, nodding at the leather cock, laughter making her brave. “If that’s alright. You’re right, Theon. What we have isn’t usual. But I couldn’t… you know that… I can’t. If I feel trapped…”

“I know, Sans,” Theon interrupted, gently. He did know, in a way that no-one else could. It was rare but it happened sometimes when they changed positions that he was on top of her, loomed over her and he had felt the panic that seized her limbs, that blossomed on her face when it happened, and he would shift his weight away from her as quickly as he could, say her name and his until she came back to him. He had felt it himself, rarely, but at times she would grip his wrist or his hands in a way that felt not like passion, but like a restraint, and he would feel the panic run through him, his limbs freeze, and she would let him go, call his name, bring him back to the here and the now, away from the cross in the Dreadfort. 

Ramsay had taught them both the same language and they were fluent in it. 

But he put that aside now, took his time instead, kissing Sansa until it felt like she melted beneath him, lips and limbs soft within the circle of his arms. He took her shift from her as she unlaced his shirt, his trews, used her fingers to draw circles on his skin with her nails, a frisson that made him shudder with desire. Their kisses grew deeper and he lay her down, kissed down the length of her, tasted her quim to be sure that she was ready for this. It dripped with honey already but it wasn’t enough for him and he retrieved the bottle of Dornish oil from the drawers beside the bed, dripped in onto her red curls, used his tongue to press it deep within her folds, sneakily taking the opportunity to kiss and lave her pearl until her fingers were gripped tightly in his hair, a soft string of “ _fucking gods, Theon!”_ falling from her lips. He wasn’t concentrating fully on his task, though, instead reaching for the cock, ensuring it was liberally coated in oil as well. When it was, he took the time to concentrate again, using his mouth and fingers on Sansa’s quim until she was quivering beneath him, wet and open and nearly but not quite at her peak. 

He lifted his head, dropped it, wiping his mouth on the sheets for a second. “Sansa,” he said and she made an impatient mewling noise at him, a wanting noise. “I’m going to try now. Is that alright?” and she nodded impatiently, not even opening her eyes. 

He sat back on his haunches then, ensuring he wasn’t resting any weight on her, and slid two fingers into her quim, enjoyed the small noise she made in her throat at the feeling. Sliding the cock into his hand, he let it slide along his fingers, follow them into Sansa’s quim as he withdrew his fingers. 

He was slow and gentle with his movement, but little more than half of it was sheathed within Sansa when she froze, her legs suddenly stiff and still, her chest rising and falling faster and faster as her breaths grew more panicked. It took only a second for Theon to remove it from her and then he slid up beside her in the bed, cradling her face in his hands. 

“Sansa,” he crooned. “Sansa, it’s Theon. It’s Theon and I’ll never hurt you and it’s gone now and you’re here and safe and it’s Theon, it’s only Theon, you’re Sansa and it’s Theon and everything is alright.”

It took only a few minutes before she came back to him, her arms curling around him as she sat up, shaking breaths against his shoulder as she returned to the here and now, away from where she had gone in her head. 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa said, finally and he shook his head against hers.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Sansa,” he said reassuringly. “I was hoping it wouldn’t happen but it isn’t surprising.”

“I thought I could… But as soon as I felt it… I… there’s only been pain. He wanted it to hurt,” she said, softly. “No matter what he did, he wanted to make sure it hurt. He…” she pressed her face into his shoulder again for a moment, steadied herself. But if anyone would understand, if there was anyone she could say it to, it would be Theon. “He liked it when he could make me bleed. Down there. If there wasn’t blood on… on him, when he had… finished, he would be angry.”

Theon shuddered against her, not needing any more words to understand exactly what it was like when Ramsay was angry. 

“It doesn’t… after what he did to you… it doesn’t make you feel… like that?” Sansa asked Theon. 

“It’s different. Different things,” said Theon and closed his eyes, let out a long breath through his nose. “Blades,” he whispered. “I’m not good… I told you, what happened with Yara, when Euron attacked the Iron Fleet. I didn’t jump overboard because we lost, because Euron would have killed me. His crew were cutting out the tongues of Yara’s crew, cutting off their ears and I…” he stopped, drew a deep breath, made sure he remembered where he was, “I saw the blades against their faces and I… went back to the Dreadfort. I was there in the Dreadfort, on the cross, being Reek, watching Ramsay do… he used to make me watch… Euron is another Ramsay. He hurts people because he likes hurting people and I couldn’t… I couldn’t stay. It’s not that I didn’t want to save Yara. Yara wasn’t even there. There were just the blades and Ramsay and the cross and the blood and I couldn’t stay…”

“Stay with me, Theon,” said Sansa, softly. “Here, now, you’re here with me in my chambers and we’re safe. We’re both safe,” and slowly the _Black Wind_ and Euron and Ramsay and the cross receded back into the past from where they had come. 

“There’s a reason I never let anyone see me shave,” said Theon, trying to be wry again, nearly succeeding, “because it’s really all a bit fucking... fraught.”

Sansa nodded and then glanced to the side, to where the leather cock sat on the bed. “At least now I know more about what I’m… not good with.”

“There was no-one else was there?” Theon asked, softly, elaborated when Sansa looked at him, puzzled. “Tyrion never touched you, you said, and you never let Baelish touch you beyond a kiss. There was only Ramsay.”

“Only him,” confirmed Sansa. “Some men, in an alley in King’s Landing. When everything went to the Seven Hells once, but the Hound saved me from them before they did anything.”

“Sans,” breathed Theon. “How did you… I know you said you never kissed a man you loved, but you… the only thing you’ve ever known is…” he stopped, stuttering over the word, over the pain of it. “Rape,” he said finally. “And pain. How did you ever… why would you ever want to again? How could you ever… you asked me to your bed, Sansa. How did you ever… want that? Even knowing what was done to me, how could you ever let any man touch you again?”

“Only you,” said Sansa, softly. “I cannot imagine ever wanting another man to touch me. Not… like that. But I wanted you, Theon. I wanted to take you as my husband. Truly as my husband. And… I knew you would be kind. I thought maybe it could be… People seemed to like it. I thought maybe I could learn to like it.”

Theon looked at her, tilting his head. “Sans,” he asked. “What did you think… if you learned to like it, what did you think it would be like?”

Sansa shrugged, a small blush creeping onto her cheeks. “I thought it might be nice. I… sometimes I heard some of the serving girls talking about it. They… it seemed to be… nice.”

“Nice,” said Theon. “Like…”

“Like… like kissing. Someone you liked. When… back before I knew what Joffrey was and he kissed my hand and it was nice. I thought… like that.” Sansa smiled. “I was far more in love with you, Theon, than I ever was with Joffrey, when I asked you to kiss me. I was in love _with you_ , not the dream of some pretty prince I didn’t know at all. And when you kissed me, it felt like… a hundred times better than a kiss on the hand from Joffrey. And I knew you used to… like it. So I thought maybe it could be… nice.”

“Like kissing,” breathed Theon. “You thought it might feel as good as kissing. After Ramsay. And you were willing to try.” He shook his head, then cupped Sansa’s face within his hands. “Sansa Stark, you are the bravest woman in all of Westeros. The best and bravest and strongest woman I have ever met.”

“Theon,” she said and her eyes shone with tears. “Thank you,” she said and nestled her head into his chest, let him stroke her hair. Finally, with a sniff, she sat back. “It’s a lot better than kissing,” she said and Theon gave a sudden laugh, and Sansa echoed it, a slightly teary sound. She looked again at the leather cock. “So what do we do with it?” she asked.

“Whatever you want,” said Theon. “Put it back in the chest and never look at it again. Throw it in the fire. Donate it to the poor. Throw it into the Wolfswood. I can take it with me next time I sail to Pyke and drop it in the deepest part of the ocean. You can call it silly names and make fun of it. Whatever you want to do with it, Sansa, you can do.”

Sansa stared at it for a while, thinking it through. “I don’t want it to beat me,” she said slowly. “Don’t want… _him_ to win. I like… I like the idea of laughing at it. Calling it something silly. It’s hard to be frightened of something you can laugh at, isn’t it?” She looked at Theon, appealing for his answer. 

“Why do you think I spent my entire life laughing at everyone in Winterfell?” Theon replied. “Because it was that or spend all my time being fucking terrified. Laughing is… sometimes it’s good to make frightening things ridiculous.”

“Then I will make it ridiculous,” said Sansa, decisively. “A silly name. But not too silly.”

“Should he be a noble?” said Theon. “A Lord, perhaps.”

“No,” replied Sansa. “There’s only one Lord I want in my bed and I already have him,” she said and the conversation paused for a moment as Theon kissed her quite thoroughly in response to that. “But someone noble. Not like most Lords,” she said and smiled at Theon, mischievously. “A Ser, he should be.”

“Then a Ser he should be,” said Theon. “What kind of ridiculous name should he have.”

Sansa thought deeply for a moment and then peeked up at Theon, a blush on her cheeks, a tiny smile on her lips, her eyes full of mischief, a look so endearing that, for a moment, he felt a surge of love so intense that he thought his heart might stop from the sheer force of it. 

“I think,” she said. “That he should be Ser Florian. Ser Florian the… the Upstanding,” and Theon gave a great shout of laughter.

“Then Ser Florian the Upstanding, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms he shall be,” said Theon. “Florian the Fool.”

“Still my favourite,” replied Sansa. She looked at it. “He’s already… less frightening.”

“He is, isn’t he?” said Theon, looking at it. 

“But I think he should go live in his home in the chest for now,” said Sansa. “Before he caused all of the problems that a foolish knight can cause, I was very close to being reminded exactly how very nice kissing can be.”

Theon raised an eyebrow, his grin suddenly wicked. “Kissing your mouth, Sansa Stark?”

“Kissing my quim, Lord Theon,” she replied. “In that special way you have. That very special way you have.”

“That way that makes you say fuck a lot, Lady Sansa?” he replied.

“That very way,” she said. “I would like you to make me say fuck, Lord Theon. Repeatedly. But first you should go and put Ser Florian the Upstanding back in the chest and get the other package, from the other end of the chest out.”

“The other package?” Theon asked. 

“Ser Florian wasn’t the only thing I had made from the Detailed Diagrams,” said Sansa. “I had something made for you, too.” She looked at him very solemnly. “Because sometimes my hand gets tired and well, what sort of excuse should that be?”

“I am,” said Theon and his grin completely belied his words, “scandalised that you could be so forward.” He paused for a second. “Exactly where is this package?”

*****

In the aftermath, they lay strewn across the bed, both shattered. 

“Do you think,” said Theon, when he could make sentences again, “that, if we win this war, a title for Grey Worm would be a little too extravagant?”

“I think,” replied Sansa, not opening her eyes, not sure if she could open her eyes, hoping only that the trembling in her legs would stop sometime soon, “that it was actually one of Missandei’s footnotes.”

“She speaks a lot of languages, doesn’t she?” said Theon and Sansa hummed her agreement. “Maybe she could use some kind of dead one and then I could bestow the title of Lady of the Fabulous Fuck on her and she could use it every day and no one else would know.”

“That would be nice,” murmured Sansa, mostly asleep.

“That’s what I thought,” said Theon and then rolled over, pressed a kiss to Sansa’s temple. “Sleep well,” he said.

“Good night, my Lord,” Sansa murmured and slept. 

“Good night, brave Lady,” he said and curled himself into her side. “Nice,” he chuckled and then followed Sansa into sleep. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finally finished all 8 seasons of the show! Yay me! (And season 1 of the Witcher, which is not particularly relevant except I can’t get the damned song out of my head.) Which means I can actually start moving the plot (such as it is) forward. 
> 
> Except I realised that the plot of Gifts is pretty much “Sansa and Theon talk in bed”. 
> 
> (Also, I knew season 8 post-s08e03 was going to be... not great, but I had no idea how not great it was going to be. It was... not great. Talking in bed is honestly a huge improvement on the plot that actually happened.)


	17. Legacies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no question as to how much Sansa loved the North. Her childhood may have been filled with fancies of the South, but that had long been lost. The strange, awkward, unwieldy people of the North, inclined to stubbornness and suspicion, had become what she sought to protect with all of her skills and cleverness and she loved them fiercely. 
> 
> It didn’t mean, however, that they didn’t drive her mad sometimes.

Winterfell was in chaos. 

Rooms had been turned upside down, linens dragged out of cupboards and freshened, horses shod, tack cleaned, the kitchens scrubbed, stores packed, armour polished, Maesters consulted, maids chivied into action, young men tested and weapons tried. 

There was no question as to how much Sansa loved the North. Her childhood may have been filled with fancies of the South, but that had long been lost. The strange, awkward, unwieldy people of the North, inclined to stubbornness and suspicion, had become what she sought to protect with all of her skills and cleverness and she loved them fiercely. 

It didn’t mean, however, that they didn’t drive her mad sometimes. 

They accepted some things that she thought they never would. Accepted a bastard son who had been deemed fit for nothing but the Watch as King in the North, accepted the pronouncements of a crippled young man as those of the Three-Eyed Raven, accepted that the dead had risen and must be fought with dragonfire, accepted that the men of the North must travel to King’s Landing to fight under a Dragon Queen. Accepted, more personally, her proposed alliance with the Iron Islands, reavers and raiders, with barely a concern voiced. Accepted almost without qualm that she was betrothed to a man who had once betrayed her family and the North. Accepted, even, that she shared a bed with Theon Greyjoy, who some there had known as a hostage, some as an invader, and some as the prisoner called Reek (and Sansa knew the smallfolk of Winterfell were aware of the well-worn path between her chambers and Theon’s, no matter how politely everyone pretended). 

But Sansa sat now, in the chair at the head of the audience chamber, pinching the bridge of her nose lightly to stop the headache that threatened to visit her, because of the stubbornly unhappy face of the head cook of Winterfell. 

“Lady Sansa,” said Theon, somewhat anxiously, from where he sat beside her (he had tried, as he always did, to draw his chair back, place himself in a subservient position, but her formidable glare at him when she heard the scrape of his chair’s legs had sheepishly made him bring it back up beside hers). “Are you well?” 

“I’m fine,” ground out Sansa. “So you’re telling me, Maelle,” she said, with a tightly held calmness, “that you’ve been put forward by the keep to let me know that they’re unhappy about my… our,” she indicated Theon with a slight flip of her hand, “plans to travel to White Harbor?”

“Yes, m’lady,” said Maelle, obviously gathering her courage in the hands that clutched tightly at the front of her apron. “It’s not… proper.”

“Not proper,” sighed Sansa, deciding that anger was not going to help her through this, tucking the emotion quietly away inside her mind. “You do not consider it proper that I travel with Lord Theon? Would you consider it unseemly that I travel towards a war with my Master at Arms if I was not betrothed to him?”

Maelle stared at Sansa for a moment and then gave a start. “Oh no, m’lady,” she said, her eyes suddenly wide, as if she’d realised the source of the confusion. “Not _that_ kind of proper. Lord Theon will keep you protected on the road. But you travel so lightly! So small a retinue. You are the Lady of Winterfell! You need a _proper_ retinue. A caravan fit for your status. There should be wheelhouses and banners and men at arms to accompany you, as befits _our_ Lady.”

Sansa heard a strange, strangled sound from beside her, which she realised was the sound of Theon starting to laugh and suppressing it sternly. She didn’t dare look at him, knowing that the corner of his mouth would be curled up, mischievous crinkles at the corners of his eyes and that she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from laughing if she saw that.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Sansa said, infinitely patient, “but we don’t have wheelhouses. Or men at arms. Or any capacity to create a caravan of… appropriate proportions.”

Maelle ducked her head slightly, a half-apologetic movement. “We thought perhaps… you could send a raven to Lord Manderly. Request that he send men to Winterfell to escort you to White Harbor. He has sworn his fealty to the King in the North. Surely protecting the King’s sister would be an honour to him.” It was a statement not a question. 

Sansa took a few moments to think about how to respond to Maelle’s words, the sudden change in what she had thought the problem was going to be. “Maelle,” she said, according the answer the gravity it deserved. “Lord Manderly, I’m sure, would be honoured to provide an appropriate escort to our travels. But Lord Manderly is currently on the battlelines outside King’s Landing, along with the majority of his men at arms. The North has given much in this war against the Lannister queen and Lord Theon and I have therefore planned our travels appropriate to the resources available to us.”

“You know,” said Theon, his voice as grave as Sansa’s and when she glanced at him, his expression was respectful of Maelle, “that I would accord Lady Sansa all of the honours appropriate to her status, if I could. But there are few men available to us, and those that are… well, they are young or old, or recovering from wounds, and only a few can manage the travel. Lady Sansa and I have discussed what matters, and she has decided, as is right, that some men must remain to defend the North.”

“The war in the South comes to an end,” said Sansa. “Soon. The siege will be ended and we must make plans for whichever way it may end. If there is victory for the North, then I must travel to King’s Landing to represent Winterfell in the parleys that will follow the war. The needs of the North are great and we will require the assistance of the South to supply us until the next harvest can be gathered.”

There was a silence then, and then Maelle quietly said, “And if there is defeat, m’lady?” and Sansa remembered why she loved her people so fiercely. That a cook would challenge her Lady and a Lord as to what would happen if they should lose a war would not been a possibility even remotely entertained in the viper’s nest that was King’s Landing. 

“Then Lord Theon and I will bring nothing but danger to Winterfell,” replied Sansa. “It would be best for all in the North that we do not bring the wrath of Cersei Lannister and Euron Greyjoy upon your heads.”

“But you brought the Knights of the Vale to win the Battle of the Bastards. You ended the Bolton Bastard’s reign,” said Maelle, her eyes clear, her chin lifted in pride, the pride of one who had survived Ramsay’s depredations. “And Lord Theon is the Hero of the Godswood. All of us,” Maelle nodded at the servants who were clustered behind and somewhat back from her, all of whom gave nods of varying levels of enthusiasm, “would be proud to stand against that Southern whore and that reaving Ironborn scum pretender she’s taken as her lover. Begging your pardon, Lord Theon.”

“No insult taken,” replied Theon, with a tilt of his head.

“We trust you, Lady Sansa. Lord Theon. To fight for us in the North. To save us.” Maelle’s face was filled with an indomitable spirit, the light that Sansa had seen in Lyanna Mormont’s eyes, in Arya’s. 

For a moment, Sansa felt tears threaten to spill, and she swallowed them down only with difficulty, bolstered by the light touch of Theon’s fingers on the back of her hand. “You do me great honour, Maelle,” she said. “All of you do me great honour. Do _us_ great honour.” She sat back in her chair, drew in a deep breath. “I would die for the North, Maelle, for all of you, as would Lord Theon. To save you. But if we lose the war in the South, I won’t be dying to save you. I would just die. We would all just die. Our best fighting men are in the South, half our holds are empty of families, we have no stores to withstand a siege. Lord Theon may be the greatest archer in the land, and have trained those men here well, but they are few in number and could not hold out against the Lannister armies, the Golden Company, even depleted as they are by the siege of King’s Landing. Lord Theon and I have considered this for a long time, have sought counsel from the King in the North, from Ser Davos and Queen Yara. We all agree that Winterfell will be safest if Lord Theon and I are not here, if Cersei Lannister brings her troops north. She… does not care for the North it is true, but her forces are much weakened and normally she would be unlikely to seek anything but that the North agrees to remain part of the Seven Kingdoms. But not if it is personal.” Sansa rubbed her brow lightly again, then dropped her hand back into her lap. “She still holds me responsible for the death of King Joffrey, although I played no part in it. And Euron Greyjoy has already determined that he needs to murder Queen Yara and Lord Theon to strengthen his hold on the Iron Islands.”

“And just because that’s what he does for fun,” observed Theon, not lightly. “Lady Sansa is right. The two of us are a direct danger to everyone left in the North, if the war is lost. We would not protect Winterfell with our presence; we would, instead, ensure its fall.”

“But you’re the Hero of the Godswood,” protested Maelle.

Theon smiled, self-deprecating. “That doesn’t change that I’m just one man. With a small force, and a keep whose walls are still not fully repaired, with insufficient stores for a siege and too many people to protect. I will do anything - _anything_ \- to keep Lady Sansa alive and well and safe. Including making sure we can flee to Essos before Cersei and Euron can ensure our murder.” He leaned forward, his expression earnest, his gaze locked with Maelle’s. “It would not be the end of the North. From Essos, Lady Sansa can plan a return, gather forces, seek out what is necessary to defeat the enemies of the North. It will give us time. And Queen Yara and I are not without resources in Essos. I pledge now that they would be used to support the return of both Yara and Sansa to Westeros.”

“We will leave a small force at Winterfell, sufficient to keep it safe against any who may seek to take advantage of our absence as we travel,” said Sansa. “Word will come to White Harbor, if the Dragon Queen’s forces fall. I will send a raven - send a number of ravens - if such happens. Those who remain in Winterfell should return to their holds or to those that lie empty, those Maesters who have come to join us from Oldtown should return there, the wounded should seek to return to their homes or go to the other holds. Barely a token force should remain at Winterfell, to surrender it to Cersei, when and if the time comes.” Sansa stood up, moved down the steps, took Maelle’s hands in her own. “I wish the North to survive. Those who are of the North to survive. As you survived Ramsay’s reign. Hold strong. Remember. And we pledge to return, to fight for the North.” She looked back at Theon, who nodded. 

Sansa turned back to Maelle, continued to hold her hands. Maelle raised her chin, a proud look. “The North remembers, Lady Sansa,” she said. “If they fall in the South, we will do as you ask. We will bend the knee and wait for your return. But,” and Maelle’s eyes shone, “they will not fall.”

“No,” replied Sansa, hearing Theon echo her. “They will not fall.”

*****

The day had ended, somewhat surprisingly, with Sansa and Theon lying in a great pile of feather pillows and linens in the solar. 

After the meeting in the audience chamber, the smallfolk had tackled the task of readying Winterfell, and the caravan Sansa would travel in, with renewed vigour. Somehow, the middle of that process ended up in a state of chaos and packing and unpacking of truly epic proportions and, in light of everything, Sansa had declared that everyone in the keep should go to Wintertown, to drink and shop and carouse and enjoy the day. Other than a few men patrolling the walls, there was barely a soul left in the keep, except for Sansa and Theon. 

In the middle of sorting linens and bedclothes for the journey, Theon had declared that he also wished to carouse or possibly even frolic, and somehow that had led to building an enormous pile of pillows in the solar, a vast soft bed that they now lay in, side by side, looking up at the sun that streamed down upon them, the late afternoon light soft, not touching except for their intertwined hands. 

Their conversation had skipped swiftly from topic to topic, bouncing problems back and forth between them, their discussion helping Sansa resolve some of the issues she had been uncertain of, both in terms of their travel and of what may happen in White Harbor and, more importantly, King’s Landing.

Theon had always been a clever, quick thinker and speaker, she realised, but when he’d been young that cleverness had been both sly and smug and, when he could get away with it, sharp, with small cruelties laced in his words. She’d been clever, too, she thought, but smug in that knowledge, that she was perfect Sansa, destined to be Queen of all Westeros, and (she conceded to herself) cruel when it came to Arya and Jon at the very least. All of those things had been stripped away from both of them over time and their cleverness hungered instead to fix things, to make things work, to protect their people and make the world a better place. 

And to try and unknot problems before they arrived. “Has Jon told you? What’s happening with Daenerys? I thought… He knows what his parentage makes him. What it makes her. I’d think by now we might know if that… how that affects her view of their alliance.” Theon’s question sounded almost idle, but clearly wasn’t.

“Alliance. That’s one way to put it. Or dalliance,” said Sansa and caught the flash of Theon’s swift grin at her wordplay out of the corner of her eye. “He won’t say anything about it. I try not to make it obvious what I’m asking in my letters to him, because for all I know he may share them with Daenerys, but he hasn’t said anything about… either matter. Whether they still share a tent. What she thinks about his claim to the Iron Throne. Which… is not all that surprising for Jon. He much prefers brooding over his problems than talking about them.”

“Did you mention our betrothal? In your letters to him,” asked Theon, with a tone that made Sansa glance at him, to find him studiously considering the play of sunlight on the ceiling.

“Not directly,” she said. “I’d rather win his approval for an alliance with the Iron Islands face to face. But I… he knows. That I love you. That you love me. That I do not plan to make myself available for any alliance he may propose that is based on marriage. I’m sure he worked it out.”

“I’m sure he did,” said Theon and the smallest wince touched his face when she glanced at him again. “He may have sent me a raven.”

“He didn’t threaten you, did he?” said Sansa, feeling the heated stirrings of anger in her stomach. Jon knew – at least to some extent, he knew – what Ramsay had done to Theon. If he had dared to offer physical harm to Theon…

“No,” said Theon, cutting Sansa’s anger short. “No. He is – well, as much as Jon can be happy, he’s happy that you are happy. He just wanted to be absolutely clear about the fact that he required me to spend the rest of my days making sure you stayed happy. Fortunately, that isn’t a hard promise to make. Considering it was what I was planning to devote the rest of my days to doing, anyway.”

Sansa’s fingers lightly squeezed Theon’s in acknowledgment of his words, how deeply they were meant. “Any other ravens come you haven’t mentioned?” she said lightly, trying to make sure Theon knew she was being playful, not setting a trap for him ( _so many ways they had to work around the things Ramsay had made dangerous for one or the other of them, so many ways they had to learn to be gentle and careful with each other_ ). 

“I… maybe?” Theon answered, cautiously. 

“From Brienne perhaps?” asked Sansa, her lips curling in a smile. 

“She may have sent me the odd raven,” said Theon, but his lips also quirked upwards and Sansa felt her mood lift, knowing he wasn’t taking this the wrong way. 

“And why are you corresponding with Brienne, my love?” said Sansa. 

“How did you work out I was?” asked Theon in response. “Answer mine and I’ll answer yours.” 

“When you said that she’d told you Renly and Loras were bedmates,” replied Sansa. “I thought about it afterwards and I couldn’t imagine that topic coming up the first time you met Brienne,” ( _starved, beaten, freezing, both bleeding from wounds seen and unseen, trembling in the snow, surrounded by the dead bodies of Bolton men_ ) “and you were mostly unconscious when you were both in Winterfell. So there had to be a raven. Or letters.” 

“A little of both,” said Theon. “She worries.” 

“Worries?” Sansa raised an eyebrow. “She writes to me regularly. What would she worry about that she had to write to you?” 

“About you. Of course,” replied Theon. “She worries if you are well. If you take on too much. Winterfell and the wounded and winter and everything that falls out of those. She doesn’t know if she should believe you, if you say you are well. She knows that if I say you are well, then it’s true.” 

“Mmm,” replied Sansa, not letting how deeply Brienne’s concern touched her show. “Anyone else you correspond with about my health?” 

“Tyrion,” said Theon promptly. “Jon. Bran. Even Jaime asked once.” 

“And you didn’t think to tell me?” said Sansa. 

She heard the pillows beneath Theon rustle, assumed he’d shrugged. “They are concerned about you. I reassure them. There’s nothing to tell.” 

“But still,” said Sansa. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” 

“Sansa Stark,” Theon turned over, faced Sansa, lifting himself up onto his elbow to look down at her. “It wasn’t important, so I didn’t tell you, which is not the same as lying. I doubt I could lie to you to save my life.”

She let a small smile curl her lips up, trying to reduce the concern she saw hovering in his eyes. “What about to save _my_ life?” she asked.

“I could tell you black was white and convince you of the truth of it,” he replied, utterly sincere. “I would do anything I had to, to keep you alive and well.”

She reached up, traced a finger down his cheekbone. “I know,” she said. “It is a heavy responsibility.”

“I don’t want to be a burden…” Theon started, anxiety lacing his words, but Sansa cut him off. 

“Did I say burden?” she said sharply. “Is that the word that came out of my mouth?” She waited until he shook his head and then continued, “It’s a responsibility, Theon. One I am happy to carry. But I need to remember your care for me. That you would put yourself in danger to save me. That I must be careful with my life, because that will keep you safe as well.”

“That seems,” said Theon, solemnly, “a mutually acceptable arrangement,” and his smile blossomed as she leaned upwards and kissed his chin lightly, not quite able to reach his mouth from her awkward position. 

He lay back then, beside her. “So,” he said, “Aegon Targaryen. It doesn't seem to… fit. Not on Snow.”

“I was going to say he seems to be too short to be a Targaryen, but Daenerys is… not tall,” said Sansa.

“He’s not silver enough. You Starks must have strong blood to make him so dark-haired. Dark-eyed.”

“Maybe the silver doesn’t come through if you’re not fucking your sister,” said Sansa, and laughed at the indrawn gasp of Theon’s breath at her unexpected swearing. “You’re a terrible influence, Theon Greyjoy. That, and Cersei and Joffrey and all those golden lions and silver dragons - it makes me angry. Everything that got broken because of Cersei and Jaime. Because they couldn’t… stop. Because they made Joffrey. Because Joffrey… did all the things he did.”

“It didn’t…” Theon stopped, thought for a moment, started again. “Your aunt - how do you think she could do it? It seems… strange to me.”

“What part?” asked Sansa. 

“That she… they called it the Tower of Joy. Rhaegar called it that. And everyone assumed it was because he was mad and the Mad King’s son doing the same again, kidnap and rape and everything the Targaryens turned into but… Lyanna Stark meant it. She married a Targaryen prince willingly, a man already married and a father, and she stayed with him in the Tower of Joy as her father and brother were killed, as rebellion ran through the land, as Aerys burned so many. How could you stay in the Tower of Joy when your father was burned to death, your brother murdered and then send your husband out to fight against your brother and your betrothed? I cannot… I have done terrible things for stupid reasons but I… I cannot understand that.”

“It makes me want to vomit,” said Sansa, suddenly, viciously, earning her a startled look from Theon, who gripped her hand more tightly. “I was ten and four when my father died and I knew what Joffrey was, knew what Cersei was, knew the nest of vipers that was King’s Landing. And I was willing to sell myself to a monster to save my father’s life, to save Robb, to save the North. I would have willingly gone to Joffrey’s bed as his wife if he had agreed to let my father live. And Aunt Lyanna couldn’t be bothered to even come down from her Tower of _Joy_ …” Sansa hissed the last word, dripping with contempt, and ground to a stop, unable to continue.  

“I’m sorry,” said Theon, softly. “For… for bringing it up,” but Sansa shook her head. 

“There were so many lies,” she said. “So many. So many things I was told about being a Stark, about Lyanna and Robert and King’s Landing and… I am tired of lies.”

“I wonder what it meant to him,” said Theon, staring back up at the ceiling. “To Ned. For everyone to know you as the most honourable man in Westeros, to try to live to that ideal when you know your sister… that she chose… that her actions caused the death of your father, your brother and she didn’t even try to save them. That she was married to the man who went to war against you, sought to kill you, so he could keep his own throne, install your nephew upon it after he’d killed you. Then to bring her son home and raise him as your bastard, drive a stake into your marriage, lie to your best friend, the King... I wonder what it meant to him to live with that all the days of his life.”

“I…” said Sansa and stopped. It was too large, too new a thought.

“He would have killed me, you know,” said Theon, matter of factly. “If Balon had rebelled again. He would have taken my head.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” said Sansa, but her words no longer rang with her old conviction. 

“Robb cried,” said Theon, not looking at Sansa. “When we were about ten, some of the men who’d come back from the Greyjoy Rebellion came to Winterfell. They were quite happy to tell Ned’s ward that his head would be forfeit if his father dared set a single ship to reave in the North and that they’d enjoy watching it. Robb cried. And Ned yelled at the men and they left and he made Robb believe that it wasn’t anything he had to worry about. ‘It will never happen,’ he said. I always remembered that. He didn’t say he wouldn’t do it. He said that it would never happen, meant that Balon had been beaten so severely that he would never rebel again. Robb - thought it meant his father would never behead the boy being brought up as his brother, his new best friend. That his father would never do such a thing. You all grew up believing that.” Theon drew a deep breath. “Ned never said he wouldn’t do it. You weren’t the only children in Winterfell. There were others. Others who had lost fathers in the Greyjoy rebellion, had lost family to the reavers. They never let me forget. What Ned would do to me, if my father rebelled. And every time someone told me that Ned Stark was the most honourable man in Westeros, that he would do what honour would demand of him, I knew exactly what honour would demand of him, if my father rebelled.”

“Theon,” said Sansa, helplessly. 

“I wrote him a letter,” continued Theon, relentless. “I wrote Robb a letter. When I knew my father planned to raid the North again, when I knew he was going to declare himself King of the Iron Islands. I wrote a letter to Robb telling him I would come back to the North to help him in the fight against - against everyone, it felt like. And then, I tried to work out where I could get a raven from, because they were all my father’s and I was betraying him. And I remembered that Robb was an honourable man, they all said he was like his father and I remembered what it meant to me that Ned was an honourable man. What his honour meant. And I wondered if Robb would think he needed to take my head because my father had rebelled again...” There was silence and then Theon said, his voice barely a whisper. “I burned the letter.”

“He took Lord Karstark’s head,” whispered Sansa. “It was stupid and a poor decision and it cost him the North.”

“And he did it because he was an honourable man,” replied Theon. “Like his father.”

Sansa felt like something broke inside of her then, a dam of old, half-understood things and she barely had time to draw in a great, gasping breath before she began to sob. She drew her hand out of Theon’s, curled away from him as her body heaved, tears falling like a storm. She felt Theon’s hand on her shoulder, pushed it away, hoped he understood. It felt like a wrongness, to accept comfort from him, when so much of what was making her cry was what he had always known. The old knot of things she had thought about her father, the resentment, the shame, the blame, that he had sold her to Joffrey when he knew what the Lannisters were, that he had put her in danger, that she had had to offer herself, her own honour, to Joffrey and Cersei to try and save her father, that he had brought up Theon as his son when he was hostage, that he had lied to Jon his whole life, that he had lost Arya and let Lady be killed all to keep from offending his oldest friend, all of those things unravelled then inside Sansa, poured out of her in great heaving sobs. 

The storm seemed to last for a long time, but slowly she calmed and quietened, until only silent tears tracked down her face. Her feelings were still a muddle, one she may never be able to work out, but she had more clarity around them, a clearer view of what her father had been, of what she thought of him. Finally she turned over, to find Theon sitting cross-legged, watching her with concern.

“Sansa,” he said and she reached up, pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him.

“It’s not your fault. Not this. I just… I saw my father one way all my life. And so much of what fell out of his choices did not… match what I believed. I think he was a good man. I truly do. But not as good as I believed.” She sighed. “He loved me. And he sold me to Joffrey Lannister. Even when he suspected what Joffrey was. That is… a hard thing to know.”

“He loved you. He loved all of you, so much,” said Theon.

“He coddled me,” Sansa replied. “He saw what could happen because of an ill-advised betrothal, a marriage without love, even a thoughtless marriage made in haste. And he filled my head with the story of how I was going to be the Queen, that I was Sansa Stark and he would choose a gentle, good man for me and I would be a beloved golden Queen of the South. Then they killed the butcher’s boy and Lady and would have killed Nymeria and he still pretended that everything… He should have learned. He should have valued me more. Trusted me more. Enough to tell me that maybe it wouldn’t all be a perfect fantasy. That not everyone got to be Florian and Jonquil.” Sansa’s smile at Theon had an edge of hardness to it. “Cersei Lannister is an utterly evil woman, but at least she told me the truth. That I may not love my husband. That it may be awful. That the only power I might have was what lay between my legs and that power depended on whether the husband you were sold to was a monster or not. She did it to hurt me, but at the very least she thought I deserved the truth.”

“Sansa,” said Theon, softly, his hand curling around hers again.

“I thought you were an awful boy, you know,” she said. “That you were mean and crude and you laughed at everyone behind their backs and you pulled my hair and encouraged Arya to be a brat and were always putting your hands up the skirts of the kitchen maids. And I look back and I wonder how you survived any of it at all. Knowing what you did. Knowing what you were.”

“I was an awful boy,” said Theon. “It’s not like you were actually wrong about that. Being Ned’s ward, being Balon’s son - it doesn’t excuse what I was. What I did.”

“No,” said Sansa. “No. But it helps me understand. When I was in Cersei’s power, I did things I will always regret. The price of being a hostage. I wonder… I wonder whether Lyanna found out she didn’t have as many choices as she thought she would. Once she was trapped in her tower all alone with Rhaegar.” 

He leaned forward, dropped a soft kiss on her brow, lay down beside her again. 

There was a long silence between them, as Sansa brought her breathing under control, slowly calmed her racing thoughts. 

Finally, softly, she said, “Would you have killed Bran and Rickon? If you had found them?”

He had told her once ( _in the depth of the night, when it seemed that all of Winterfell slept, curled within the great nest of blankets and furs on his bed, the safest place either of them had known in their lives_ ) that he had scraped his soul bare for Ramsay, finding every piece of shame and pain and hate to offer up when Ramsay strapped him to the cross and cut away pieces of him, found things that might amuse Ramsay, might let Reek be let down from the cross before too many pieces had been flayed away. She tried, always, not to let him go back to that time, to think he needed to give away all the pieces of himself as a bargain to save himself from pain. But this thing, this thing she wanted to know. 

“I don’t know,” he said eventually, after a long pause. “I didn’t want to. That’s all I can offer. But if I had found them… I don’t know. I could…” he faltered for a moment, caught his breath. “I could convince myself that Ser Rodrik deserved it. He’d failed Winterfell. He’d let it be taken by twenty men, let me take Bran and Rickon hostage. I could convince myself it was a price he deserved to pay for his failure. But when Dagmer brought me the bodies of those boys… I thought it was all a game. It was just a game to spite Robb, because…” Theon shook his head. “You don’t need to know. It was stupid and spiteful and a silly, cruel game.  Until then. Then it wasn’t a game at all. They were just little boys… I wanted so much to be what my father wanted me to be. To be Ironborn. To pay the Iron Price. He’d mocked me as a greenlander and I wanted to be… something it turned out I wasn’t.” 

“Why did you want to be… that kind of Ironborn?” Sansa asked softly.

“It was the only thing that made me safe,” replied Theon. “That my father loved me. That I was his only living son and he would do anything to keep me safe. Then I went to the Iron Islands and he didn’t care at all. He was planning a rebellion. He’d chosen Yara as his heir. He would have let Ned take my head and been glad that I was no longer a distraction. It was the only thing I had… the only thing that made me important. And it wasn’t true at all. I had two men I would call father and both of them would have taken my head. At least Ned would have cried… so I tried to make myself what Balon wanted,” Theon ground to a halt for a moment, then said, almost incongruously, “I hated that Jory died in King’s Landing, that they cut him down in the street. But I’m glad he never knew what I did to his father. They both deserved better.”

“Yes. They did,” replied Sansa. “There are a lot of people that deserved better in these last few years, Theon, and didn’t get it.” She squeezed his hand tightly, making it clear she had no intention of letting him go. “Will you ever forgive yourself? For what you did? Think you’ve been punished enough? Made amends?”

“No,” said Theon and suddenly his voice grew strong, back to the Theon that she had become used to since he’d recovered from his near-death, the Theon that nearly trusted himself. “No, I won’t.  But that doesn’t mean I need to wallow in it. Daenerys once told Yara that our fathers were terrible men, that we should leave the world a better place. I always remember that. If I wallow in all of my bad choices then I’m no better than Reek, saying sorry all the time to no purpose. I won’t do that. I won’t _be_ that.” He sighed deeply. “I don’t need to forgive myself for what I’ve done to take steps to atone for it.”

“We haven’t…” started Sansa and stopped. “We haven’t exactly fulfilled your plans to carouse. Or frolic. This afternoon.”

“I blame Snow,” said Theon solemnly. “He started all of this. You just have to say his name and suddenly there’s brooding everywhere,” and a smile stole over his face as Sansa giggled. 

“He does seem to have that effect,” said Sansa. “Maybe wolves and dragons shouldn’t mix. Can’t work out whether he wants to howl or roar, maybe. Fire and blood and snow and winter.”

“Didn’t...,” Theon said, then frowned. “I’m just… you said Tarly said the High Septon annulled Rhaegar’s marriage to Elia in secret. Do you think Elia knew? That she was - unmarried? I’m thinking back to all of those dreadful history treatises Maester Luwin used to make us read about Robert’s Rebellion and I don’t remember anything that said Elia didn’t think she was Rhaegar’s wife… right to the end. Why would you stay with Aerys if you’d discovered your husband had annulled your marriage? Wouldn’t you try to go home? Tell your family what had happened, so they would rescue you?”

Sansa thought back over all the dreadfully dull (Theon was right about that) history that Luwin had made them repeat over and over again. “I don’t… remember. She was always called his wife. Right to the end. Until... what the Mountain did to her. What they did to her children.”

“Her children,” breathed Theon. “Rhaenys and Aegon. _Aegon._ So Lyanna married a man whose wife may not have known that she wasn’t married to him any more, went and hid with him in Dorne, where Elia came from, and then named her son the same name as the son Elia bore to Rhaegar?” His voice had risen slowly in astonishment as he set out each part.

There was a very long silence between them until finally Sansa said, “You know, I’m starting to get the feeling that Aunt Lyanna… may not have been very bright.”

There was another long silence and then Theon said, “Explains a lot about Jon, really,” and Sansa started to laugh.

She rolled over onto Theon’s chest, feeling the laughter rumbling deep in his lungs as she looked down on him. “You’re a terrible boy, Theon Greyjoy,” she scolded.

“The worst,” he responded and she smiled against his mouth as she dropped her lips to his, because for the first time since he’d returned to Winterfell, he didn’t sound like he meant it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sometimes the only way to deal with terribly, terribly written plots is just to have your fanfic characters point and laugh at how ridiculous the plot it. Okay, I’ve kind of managed to come up with a very complicated way that Lyanna and Rhaegar weren’t actually the worst humans ever in my head, but there’s no way that Jon’s name being Aegon, the same as Rhaegar’s first son isn’t just ludicrous. And Theon is going to laugh at it. And Jon. Because he’ll always do both of those things :)
> 
> And hey, this chapter didn’t involve Theon and Sansa talking in bed. It involved them talking in a pillow fort! Which is totally different.
> 
> Also, George R.R. is annoyingly inconsistent with his naming conventions, with names from the North being a combination of both old English, but also French names, so I ended up going Breton for Maelle, as a combination of both.


End file.
